


Strongholds of the Mind

by MK_Morreaux



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Arrow - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Lian Yu, M/M, Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, Series Spoilers, Unresolved Emotional Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, quilson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-07 11:52:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 66,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4262331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MK_Morreaux/pseuds/MK_Morreaux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lock and key. </p><p>Slade Wilson unleashed Oliver's violence. Slade Wilson taught Oliver control. Oliver didn't realize that he would become both lock and key to Slade's own scales of violence and control. He didn't realize that what happened on Lian Yu would freeze him in precarious balance between the two extremes. Slade had been his own lock and key.</p><p>There's no moving forward if the right key does not turn and click in the right lock. Whether they deny it or not.</p><p>(A retelling of Seasons 2 & 3 of "Arrow")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't too happy with Season 3 in particular, so this is my way of dealing with it. And I am missing Slade Wilson TERRIBLY. So, have this little plotty-plot!
> 
> All mistakes are my own, as I have yet to acquire a beta reader. Apologies in advance!

Helena’s eyes were moist, her lips pressed together in a tight line. It had been a long time since she’d seemed so vulnerable and sincere at once. Oliver wasn’t sure he had ever seen her so completely stripped bare, not even when they’d lain together, blissed out post-coital on her bed. The thought crossed his mind: maybe Helena had been Huntress deep inside long before she’d trained with him and been given the actual moniker.

“It’s stupid but I can’t stop thinking – now that he’s dead, my father and Michael are together and I’m still here… alone.” Helena tried to laugh it off, but her brow creased with conflicting emotions. In the confines of the interrogation room, the laugh sounded twice as forced.

Oliver wanted to whisper that she was wrong, that she was _not_ alone. But he knew what she was thinking. He knew what she was feeling. He knew the guilt churning inside her, that she wished that she had been able to do more to keep Michael safe instead of leading him to his death. She blamed her father, but a part of her still felt responsible for what had happened. She felt hollow, thinking of what she could have done differently. It would eat her up inside and torture her more than anything else she might endure in the prison she was being sent to. She would be the only one who could free herself from that sense of culpability – and that was a struggle that would take her years, if not the rest of her life.

The man who had once come so close to loving her had demons upon demons of his own to silence. He himself was no closer to absolution than he had been when the Amazo had sunk and he had woken up in Amanda Waller’s custody in Hong Kong or in any of the other temporary reprieves after that. Shado had been killed because of him, Sara had been carried out to sea again, and he’d stabbed an arrow through Slade’s eye. The ship had sunk and Oliver had been the only one left breathing. They had both passed on and Oliver had been the only one left, the memory of Lian Yu his alone. Sin upon sin from the time after that – it always came back to his original failures.

Watching Helena being led away now, he wanted to call out something to her, to tell her everything would be all right. But his whole world had suddenly flipped on its axis in the last few days and he couldn’t trust himself to know exactly what to say anymore.

As he zoomed away from the precinct on his bike, away from Helena and her fate, he focused on the earth-shaking revelation that changed _everything_.

Slade Wilson was alive and in Starling City. His hair was touched with gray and he had a patch over his right eye (Oliver had to force himself not to think about exactly what it covered). There had been something jarring and wrong about seeing him wearing a crisp suit and tie, standing in the Queen family home’s main receiving room, interacting with Thea and their mother. It was like the whole world was in on a grand joke – and Oliver was the only one not getting it.

It had been crazy enough, watching Slade drive off in the sort of car that the soldier would not normally have given a second glance. That had just added a new level to the shock he had already been feeling. The true revelation of the evening had burned like a deep brand on the inside of his skull. The Mirakuru experiments in the city had definitely not been coincidental. Slade had not forgotten his promise; he’d come to Starling to keep it.

Oliver’s right hand clenched tight around the handlebars of his bike and he rolled his left shoulder back. Beneath his helmet, black determination shone in his eyes as he sped through the Glades towards Verdant.

It was just another early morning at the club, the last guests slipping out the doors to walk off the alcohol or to hail cabs to go home. The last-shift bartender jerked a thumb up at the office when she saw him, to indicate Thea was there. Oliver just shook his head. He didn’t think he could handle seeing his sister right now, not when his thoughts were on one of his most complicated secrets. He hid enough from her as it was.

“Ollie!” Sara called out just as he rounded the corner to head to what the Verdant staff knew as the locked basement storage area. “You left the station before I could catch you there.”

Of course she had come to find him. Oliver had counted her once among his failures, but when she’d returned to Starling herself, that hadn’t brought the relief he’d wished. She was alive – he had at least not condemned her to die – but she wasn’t the same girl he’d snuck onto his father’s yacht almost six years ago. She’d still wound up just like him, a killer trying to atone for his sins – and that was why she still occupied a spot on Oliver’s list of failures. She just wasn’t as high up on it as she’d been before.

“You know me well enough to have come looking for me here,” he said as he keyed in the code and led the way down the stairs. He could hear Digg and Felicity talking; Roy was likely there with them as well. He nodded at his friends, glad that they knew when to give him space. Well, Digg and Felicity knew, making a show of putting on their jackets to head home.

Roy had his eyes glued to the monitors, a silver bracelet on the table just by his elbow. There was a high chance he was watching the camera feed from the office, focused on Thea. Having him break things off with her had been one of the most painful things Oliver knew he’d ever asked of his young protégé. He knew Roy resented him for that on some level, just as he resented having had to ask it of him at all. It was necessary and he knew that, despite the bitterness, the budding teen vigilante would have let Thea go anyway because he did genuinely love her and wanted to keep her safe – even from himself.

“Hey, leave the kid be, all right?” Digg murmured, clapping Oliver on the shoulder as he passed him on the stairs. Not for the first time, the archer was grateful for his solid presence on their team.

“Bye guys, bye Sara,” Felicity waved, flashing a quick, if slightly worried, smile at the room as she hurried out.

Part of Oliver wished that they wouldn’t go. Between Sara and Roy, he wasn’t sure what peace of mind the base could give him.

“We really need to talk.” Sure enough, keeping a wary distance from the still-preoccupied Roy, Sara tried to steer Oliver into a corner so they could have their discussion. It was one he already knew the topic of and had been fiercely trying to avoid.

“Now isn’t the time,” he said, barely raising his voice as he retreated to the corner where his wing chun dummy stood. He shrugged off his jacket and started undoing his shirt buttons. He could hear Sara still following after him and it made him even tenser than he already felt.

“You’ve been avoiding talking about this for nearly a week now,” Sara pressed, reaching out to grab his arm. She maneuvered her way between Oliver and the dummy, her brows starting to furrow into a solid frown when she realized he was not looking at her, but at the lair’s farthest wall. “After that speech earlier about believing that I would do the right thing, I thought that meant that you would trust me a bit more. Trust me enough to talk to me about––”

The subdued sound of crumpling metal drew their attention. Roy had something small glinting in one shaking fist. There was no bracelet on the table anymore.

“I’m leaving,” he said gruffly. He dropped the crushed remains of the bracelet into a trash bin on the way to the stairs. As far away from them as he stood, both older vigilantes could see the stiff set of his shoulders; he was just barely fighting down his rage.

“Roy,” Oliver called, eyes fixed on the teen pausing on the lowest step. “Noon tomorrow at the usual place – no water slapping this time.”

It seemed like an eternity before he got a response.

“Not like I’m skipping town or anything.” It was as good an answer as any. Oliver thought that he caught a bitter ghostly smile make its way across Roy’s lips.

When the sound of all footsteps faded from hearing and the soft click of the door lock reached straining ears, Sara tried to force Oliver to look down at her again.

“Ollie, I’m serious,” she said. She tugged him away from the dummy to sit beside her on the cot when she failed at catching his gaze. Sliding a hand onto his knee, she squeezed lightly, an offer of comfort she wasn’t sure he was actually accepting from her. “You’ve been keeping it from the team pretty well, but I actually _met_ Slade. I know about you two and the island and––”

“You don’t know everything!” Oliver snapped, pushing off the narrow bed so he could do some training. He forewent a change into sweatpants to simply release some pent-up tension shirtless and in his jeans. “You weren’t there to see how we made things work, how Slade and Shado trained me, what Fyer’s men and then Ivo’s made me become. You were only there to see everything fall apart. And you were _not_ there at the very end!”

“I saw enough!” Sara insisted, following Oliver as he started on the dummy again.

Block-block-punch. Punch-block-chop-chop-punch. If only each punch could shove the memories just a bit further into the back of his mind. He could almost see himself driving the arrow into Slade’s right eye all over again. Water forcing him this way and that as the freighter sank had not even held a candle to what he had already been feeling that day. He hated swimming and had developed a mild phobia of drowning at sea, but it still paled in comparison to the wrenching in his gut and in his chest whenever he recalled what he had needed to do five years ago. Chop-punch-block-block-chop-punch.

“Until a week ago, you and I were trying to move forward. I wanted to and I thought you did, too. But with Slade actually _alive_ , it’s obvious that can’t really happen. Nothing’s changed since Lian Yu.”

There was no ignoring Sara. Oliver let his hands fall to his sides as he turned to finally meet her insistent stare head-on. “The Slade who took over the Amazo and did all those terrible things afterwards wasn’t really him. He was already consumed by the Mirakuru madness. He’s consumed by it even now.”

And that was the kicker.

“It’s worse than fighting a ghost,” he admitted. His voice had dropped to barely a whisper and, behind closed eyes, he could see Slade as he had looked the last time he had been himself, face half-burnt, eyes glazed, slumped heavily just inside the doorway of the old Japanese sub. Bitterly, he wondered how he could have almost fallen for the rat poison hallucinations a few months back.

“The others deserve to know,” Sara said. She wouldn’t budge on that. “You’ve told them other parts of what happened on the island already. But they can’t help you if they don’t know why Slade’s really doing this.”

“Even _I_ don’t know what he really wants here in Starling.” Oliver went back to working with the dummy. An angry set to his brows developed as his frustrations started leaking through. “I told you before, he’s several steps ahead of us no matter what we do – and all we know is that he is willing to destroy everything I care about to get his way!” At that point, he slammed his right palm against one of the arms on the dummy and sent the weakened wooden limb clattering to the ground a few feet away.

Blood bloomed from a gash on his palm from where he’d cut himself on the jagged remains. Sara reached out again, trying to pull him towards one of the work tables so they could see to the wound. It wasn’t too deep, but there were a few splinters that needed to be removed.

“You have us here to make sure he doesn’t get what he came for,” Sara promised. She dabbed at the wound with alcohol and started wrapping gauze around his hand.

Oliver looked at her, the girl he’d lost and the woman she’d become. There was no going back, no matter how he willed it.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, curling his injured hand around hers. Sorry for not keeping you safe on the Gambit. Sorry for not rescuing you from Ivo sooner. Sorry for putting you through the madness on the island. Sorry for losing you when the Amazo sank. Sorry for not being there to keep you away from the League. Sorry for not being able to make things work between us. He wanted to tell her all this, but those two words were all that he could get out of his mouth.

Sara shot him a tight, accepting smile. She got it, even without words. She understood him. “You’re still one special guy, Ollie.”

It set both of them laughing, forehead to forehead as they shared helpless bemused looks, clasping each other by the arms. They were here. They’d made it here alive and whole, and that was already a good thing. Despite all the bad, _this_ was a good thing.

“I think I’ll stay at the mansion tonight,” Oliver said eventually when he stepped back. “I want to be close in case Thea or Mom needs me.”

Helena’s face – vulnerable and bravely trying to hold back tears at the precinct – suddenly flashed in his mind again. He had failed her. She’d made some bad choices, but he’d played a part in making her what she was today. He’d failed enough people. Despite all his mother’s secrets, he wouldn’t fail what was left of his family. For Thea’s sake, he couldn’t.

A surprise was waiting for him as he steered his bike into the driveway of the family home. A black town car was parked right by the front door and he could make out a man helping Thea up the front steps. That man, he would know anywhere, even by his silhouette: Slade Wilson.

“Looks like I beat you back here from Verdant,” Thea waved him over. She smiled that tight smile that wound up on her face more often than not these days. Something was wrong – and it wasn’t just that she had clearly found out that he’d not come to see her when he’d visited the club.

“I had some calls to make,” Oliver lied smoothly. “By the time I was done, one of the guys said you’d already left.” He had to stay calm. Digg wasn’t around to play sniper, Sara was back at their base, and Roy had gone off somewhere for the night. Every one of his instincts screamed that he should demand Slade just leave them all alone.

No matter what that would do to him all over again.

“Mr. Wilson was kind enough to give me a ride home when he spotted me walking in the Glades,” Thea was explaining, shooting a quick, grateful smile at the man standing quietly by the car.

“Really kind of him.” Oliver just wanted her out of harm’s way. There was no point in hiding his animosity towards the person his sister seemed to think had been playing the gentleman for her tonight. “Why don’t you go inside, Thea? There are a few things I want Mr. Wilson to clear up for me about his support for Mom’s campaign, if he can spare a few minutes before he goes.”

“Ollie! What is wrong––”

“I’ve got time,” Slade cut in smoothly. It was still hard to get used to hearing that familiar rasp after all these years. “Have a good evening, Ms. Queen. Give your mother my regards.”

Thea just smiled at him again and waved, nudging her brother’s shoulder in passing as she slipped inside. Be nice, the gesture meant; Oliver wasn’t sure he could promise that.

“I told you before,” he said, voice as threatening as he could make it without rising. “Your quarrel is with me – not my family.”

Standing no more than a foot away from each other, gazes locked, it was a painful facsimile of a time long past. Oliver could smell Slade’s cologne, an expensive woodsy musk nothing like the pure wild rawness that should have been clinging to his skin. He refused to dwell on his face, resisted the urge to seek out the changes that the years had wrought on the older man. Could he see the Mirakuru madness in his one remaining eye? He looked anywhere but there. He had to.

“I came here to keep a promise,” Slade said, staring him down and stepping just a fraction closer.

“This is between you and me,” Oliver replied. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and in his ears. That cologne was almost dizzying to him, cloying because it was just so unnatural. He wanted to shove the other man away, but he knew breaking the tension _that_ way would only start a chain reaction for something else. And he wasn’t deluded enough to think that he could predict what that something else would actually be.

“As it is and should be.” For one brief moment, Oliver thought that Slade was going to touch him. He could feel the moment when his old companion’s shoulder shifted, even before he saw it. But Slade didn’t do anything. “Sleep well tonight, kid. And get that bandage changed. You’ll need to keep your strength up for the days to come.”

Oliver had almost forgotten about his hand. The old sheepish guilt at having been caught doing something stupid flickered in his gut before he could force it back down. It was a glimpse of the Slade he had once known, and it came as enough of a shock that he wasn’t able to immediately recover. While he’d been trying to center himself, Slade had gotten back into the town car and was now on his way out of the manor grounds.

“You know Mr. Wilson from somewhere, don’t you?”

Waiting in the foyer, leaning against the center table with her arms crossed over her chest, Thea was out for answers. And she didn’t look like she was in the mood to let him deflect her questions tonight.

“Speedy, it’s––”

“Complicated?” Thea guessed. “A long story? You were gone five years and all you’ve told us so far is that you were stranded and then tortured on a deserted island. But that can’t be all of it. I've been finding out about too many lies and secrets lately, Ollie, and I can’t take any more. You’re the only person who’s been honest with me all this time. That doesn’t have to change – unless you let it.”

He felt like he was just continuing the conversation he’d had half an hour ago with Sara. Only, Thea glaring at him was nothing like the Canary doing the same thing. _She_ knew when to back down and give Oliver space. _She_ had gone through her own trials and knew that some things were really better left unsaid.

Thea wasn’t used to holding back, to keeping secrets and having them kept from her. She was still reeling from their mother’s involvement in the Undertaking, even if she was working to somehow mend things between them. It made Oliver feel worse about helping their parent keep that other secret, the one that Thea would not be likely to understand or to forgive. And that was on top of everything else literally hidden in Verdant’s basement.

“Oliver!”

Felicity came charging into the room. She was supposed to be home by now, but here she was, still in the evening’s pink coat, glasses slightly askew. She had that half-squinty worried look on her face that meant that she wanted to say something but she wasn’t sure exactly how best to say it. In other words, out of place in the middle of the Queen family home, she had vigilante business to discuss.

“I’ve been trying to reach your cell for the last ten minutes, but I couldn’t and I wasn’t too far anyway so I came over to find you instead,” she said. Turning to Thea, she waved her hands in front of her as a bit of a peace sign and tried to smile reassuringly. “Sorry, CEO work ramming into family time. Don’t shoot the messenger and all that. Not that you could shoot the messenger, like, archer-style and everything. That’s not your style, right? Or Oliver’s! Not like Oliver has mad archery skills or anything to shoot the messenger with!”

“ _Felicity!_ ” Oliver squeezed her shoulders firmly. The babbling meant that she was really nervous. “Is it Isabel? It’s a little late for her to be bugging you to bug _me_ about things. Work stays at work and all.” They’d been a lot worse at these cover-ups in the beginning, but they were working on a rhythm to their lies now.

“She’s left six messages on my phone and email and called to yell at me to find you,” Felicity said, not missing a beat. Behind her glasses, her eyes flashed with relief. “It’s about the board vote getting moved to tomorrow.”

Finally, Thea, unable to take waiting and guessing that her brother would be busy working the rest of the night, got up off the couch and made a face. “I guess we’re having our talk in the morning,” she decided. Lips set in a tight line, she meant it; Felicity had provided a distraction, but Oliver was still going to be telling her things next time she cornered him. “Good luck with Isabel, you two.”

“Get some rest,” her brother said, clapping a hand on her shoulder. “See you at breakfast.” He needed to know what Felicity had to say, but he was adding having a carefully censored conversation with Thea to his to-do list.

The moment she left the room, he was leading Felicity back out of the house.

“A group of transfer buses from Iron Heights was attacked,” she told him in a low voice as they stepped outside. “Digg was dropping me off at my place when I got the alert from the Arrow Cave on my phone. Sixty prisoners got away. _Sixty!_ The only surviving witness said a man wearing a full face mask and wielding a _sword_ attacked the bus and convinced the prisoners to go with him!”

“Slade was _here_ not ten minutes ago,” Oliver said, catching sight of Digg waiting in his car in a shadowed part of the driveway. “He must have been making sure I was distracted while he sent a proxy to get those inmates.”

“I sent Sara a text message,” Digg said as they soon as they were all in the car with him. “Figured you’d want her to stay put at Verdant to help with this.”

This was it. Whatever Slade was planning, he was done being subtle about it.

***

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_The days and nights were blending together. Oliver knew he was still nowhere near ready to take on the people in Fyer’s camp one on one. He wasn’t a real fighter yet, but he did know how to tinker with electronics. He had noticed a radio in their makeshift shelter that he could probably figure out how to get working again, but he was too sore from today’s training to be able to do more than stare at it. He felt almost like a robot most days, following a routine he could recite in his sleep. He woke, he ate, he trained with Slade, he helped hunt and set the traps, he trained with Slade, he ate, and then he slept. Nothing but routine to keep him alive._

_Today, they were taking a break from the routine._

_“Rise and shine, kid.” The rough voice caught his attention only moments before icy water splattered right over his face._

_“SLADE_! _” he yelped, rolling to the side and jumping to his feet. His brow scrunched into a helplessly petulant frown when he caught sight of his companion._

_The ASIS operative had apparently finished his bath and now stood dressed in his pants and boots right by where Oliver had been resting. He shot the younger man a smirk and gave the wet black shirt in his hands another good wring over the mossy rocks. “Some sentry you make. I was in the water barely ten minutes and you decided to take a little nap. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you go first earlier.”_

_They’d gone on a quick trek away from the fuselage to take turns bathing and washing some of their clothes. It was the first time Oliver didn’t have to begin training at the crack of dawn and he’d welcomed the hike. He was starting to become familiar with the surrounding jungle and a small part of him had been proud when Slade had commented that he no longer stomped around through the bushes like a blind elephant. He was learning to take the backhanded comments for what they really were, since that was really just how the soldier tended to speak – and to tease._

_“I wasn’t actually sleeping, you know,” Oliver protested, combing his hair out of his face. It had been starting to dry, but Slade wringing his shirt over him made the length heavy and damp again. Still, as he looked out at the cool blue-green water of the stream, a small smile spread over his face. “A short hike without landmines, a decent bath in cool water, and a chance to get my clothes clean – I haven’t felt this peaceful in a long time.”_

_For a moment, he thought that Slade was going to tell him to stop being so careless or something like that. He could feel the older man’s eyes boring right into him. It was hard to resist the urge to rub at his bare arms and cover his exposed torso. He didn’t want the quiet to break in the face of an impromptu sparring lesson._

_“I guess it’s been a while for me, too.”_

_Slade stood half turned away from him, laying out his wet shirt to dry on the wide, flat rock where the rest of the mismatched assortment of newly-washed clothes was. His shoulder had healed well enough; he wasn’t so stiff or slow when he straightened and stretched a bit. Oliver, who supposed he counted as his companion’s pupil, started kicking a few rocks into place for a makeshift fire pit. It was nearly lunchtime and they had caught and skinned a small rodent-like creature earlier. A quick roast and they would have a satisfying light meal while they waited for their clothes to dry._

_There was a certain measure of domesticity in the scene they made, Oliver supposed. He never thought that he would ever associate such a thing with Slade Wilson, but here they both were and it was more than okay. After their aborted attempt to take control of Fyer’s supply plane and Slade’s subsequent shoulder injury and infection, the routine really was a good thing._

_And as the two men sat warming themselves by the low flames and preparing their food, Oliver concluded that the occasional break from routine could be a good thing, too._

_Eyes catching Slade shift where he sat on the other side of the small fire pit, war-hardened shoulders shifting into a semblance of relaxation, Oliver resolved to make sure they had these little breaks_ _on a regular basis._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a little rusty when it comes to writing multi-chapter works. It's actually been a few years since I last wrote fanfiction, and I'm a bit of a newcomer to the ARROW fandom. I have a rough idea of how many chapters this'll take, and I do have a general plot flow till the end, no worries!
> 
> As any other author, I do love hearing what you guys thing. Comments, constructive criticism, text error point-outs, all those are very much appreciated.
> 
> Oh, and advanced happy 4th of July, everyone!!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would blame the characters for the delay, lack of whispers in my ear and all that jazz, but the honest truth is that the draft/summary for this chapter has been in my notebook for a month but I've only recently found time to actually write it. Instead, I on-off grammar-checked Chapter 1 and played with the formatting over the last 30 days or so. Go me. xp
> 
> Thanks to all who've been reading so far. Especially loved reading the comments. :)
> 
> I still don't have a beta reader. All mistakes are completely my fault! I'd appreciate it if you pointed them out to me if you found any!
> 
> EDITED: Made some mini corrections that a very kind soul, [Twinchy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Twinchy/pseuds/Twinchy)! (31-08-15)

Felicity was a hundred percent certain she was the only person in the world with this kind of night job.

“Work with what you can reach,” the Arrow (that commanding voice always equated to the Arrow in Felicity’s mind) snapped. “You’re fast but I have longer arms. Aim for something closer to you without entering my attack range.”

Oliver was training with Roy on the mats, giving him sparring pointers on a modified version of the Asian sword form Kali. It involved a lot of circular arm movements with the sticks, and, as far as Felicity could tell, a gratuitous amount of semi-nudity. Both men were shirtless, working up a good sheen of sweat on their arms and chest. They’d been training for at least half an hour already. Tumbles, turns, a full-body lock that had sent them both rolling to the mats; somehow Oliver had gotten Roy to focus and stay calm. He wasn’t holding back pent-up rage like he usually did and wasn’t complaining about how hard it was to keep his cool. Striking left, feinting right, he seemed to have eyes only for what they were doing. And that intense focus was more than a little hot. Watching both of them – master and pupil, Felicity supposed – practically dancing around each other this way (Oliver was particularly fluid and dangerous as he slid across the mats to disarm or correct Roy), a girl could forget exactly what she was supposed to be doing.

“It’s just the first step. Remove the weapon, then incapacitate the threat.”

Letting Roy break away and start from the beginning, Oliver gestured for him to go on the offensive. Swordplay hadn’t been on the curriculum when he had first brought Roy into the group. Felicity hadn’t even known that her employer-cum-friend could do this, on top of the archery and magic kung-fu acrobatic moves. It was a surprise mostly because it was more straightforwardly lethal than archery. Of course, the reason it had become necessary was simple and complicated at once. The pain and regret in Oliver’s eyes whenever he mentioned Slade Wilson in the past had been replaced by steely resolve now that the man turned out to still be alive. And apparently psychotic.

“Felicity, duck!”

Automatically dropping to her knees, Felicity narrowly avoided getting beaned on the forehead by one of the sticks. The weapon bounced harmlessly against a far cabinet and clattered to the floor.

“What the _hell_ , guys?” she yelped, wobbling to her feet. It was a good thing she was in flats today or she could seriously have broken a heel. Rubbing at her arms, she fixed her hardest glare at the both of them and flapped her hands at Oliver when he came over to try and check on her.

“I lost my grip,” Roy said, walking over. “Sorry about that…” Shoulders slumped, he kind of looked like a kicked puppy. It was hard to stay mad at a face like that.

“No scrapes, see?” Oliver tried to reassure her a bit more anyway.

She hadn’t been hit on the head, but the shock reminded her of what she was supposed to be doing. “Roy gets a rookie pass. I’d say you owe me a spa weekend package for that – but you can apologize by taking a training break and looking at something for me, instead.”

Letting them stew in guilt a little longer, she turned and went to her computer station to pull up the files she wanted. When she noticed Oliver heading her way (sadly, he’d pulled on a tank top), she pointed at one of her three screens.

“So, I was going over inventory – can never have too much of that alloy you use for the arrow heads – and I noticed that there was a recent order put in for a new full-capacity CPU, a couple of new LCD screens, and even a fuel-based back-up generator in here. That’s just off the top of my head,” she gestured at the leftmost window, where she’d actually made a compilation of everything that wasn’t adding up, “but I made a list of the rest. Are we somehow expanding the Arrow Cave floorplan and you didn’t tell me? Doubling the size of it? ‘Cause, you know, if you’re breaking down walls and doing construction work down here, I’m _definitely_ not going to be any help.”

She could have gone on a bit longer, but Oliver was just quietly looking down at the screens. He normally cut her off before she even got halfway through a ramble. It was sort of creepy. When he actually did look at her, she was so surprised by the full attention of those ice-blue eyes that she almost forgot to breathe. This was just another of the reasons that it was a very, very bad idea to even consider having secret feelings for Mr. Vigilante Archer.

“Don’t worry about it,” Oliver said. A small almost-smile crossed his lips and he patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “I did order those, but you won’t have to do anything about them any time soon, promise.”

“You’re being vague on purpose, aren’t you?” Felicity huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. She wasn’t really _upset_ with Oliver about what looked like the newest in a long line of secrets. She was used to finding things out as soon as Oliver pulled himself out of his five-years-of-brooding routine long enough to share with the team. This secret wasn’t particularly well-kept, anyway, since she _was_ the person in charge of all the computer systems they used at the hideaway.

“Yes, I am. You really don’t need to worry about it right now.” And there was that patented false breezy look Oliver pulled off so well.

“Sometimes, I _really_ miss the days when you came down to my corner of the IT department and fed me bullshit reasons for busted laptops and weird new energy drinks. At least you made some effort on the excuses for all the crazy stunts!” Felicity didn’t want him to know how worried she really was if he was still capable of acting so casual.

“I’d like to think you and I make a better team for making up bullshit excuses than Digg and I do,” Oliver chuckled, stepping away. “You came up with a pretty good one yesterday. I just had to follow your lead.”

The worried little frown and lip-nip were back on. Felicity took a gamble. “Thea bought your follow-up this morning, then?”

And there, Oliver closed off again. Shoulders hunched a little, he turned his gaze to where Roy was practicing light strikes on one of the dummies. “I didn’t go back to the mansion today.”

“You didn’t sleep over here with Sara, either,” Felicity probed a bit further. “I know you’ve made your peace about Helena, so that can’t be why. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re regressing to the way you were when we first started working together. You’re trying to hold almost everything in.”

It wasn’t exactly the same thing, but it would never be just as it had been in the beginning. She knew about Oliver’s evening activities now and she couldn’t unsee everything that she had since they’d started working together. Still, she recalled how tense he and Sara had been when they’d come in the night before. And when she had told Oliver about Slade’s prison bus break-out, there had been something about the pinched look around his eyes that suggested he had an extra special reason to be worried about whatever the lunatic from his past was going to do with the inmates.

“I’m trying to focus on what’s important,” Oliver replied evenly. “One thing at a time.”

“I’d say dealing with your sister counts as important,” Felicity said, leaning on the work table, biting her bottom lip. “I’m not necessarily _good_ with family things, but Thea does need you right now. Since you’re sort of cooling things off with Sara, you do have a little time on your hands. Everything else going on aside, of course!”

“Sara and I – we…have too much history between us.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was a big enough chunk of it for Felicity to accept.

The computer beeped just then. The program they ran to sort through transmissions on the police scanners indicated that a minor drug raid was about to take place at a warehouse a quarter of the way between Starling and Bludhaven. What was weird was that they hadn’t heard anything about this from the police department before. These operations took at least a handful of days to plan, so something like this slipping under their radar was disconcerting.

“Detective Lance would have somehow clued Sara in accidentally if he’d known about this, right?” Felicity asked, biting her bottom lip and frowning at the screen. “Think it could have something to do with Mirakuru?”

Oliver was already heading for the display case with his uniform in it. “Tell Digg to forget the burger run. Roy and I will meet him at the west city exit in twenty minutes. Leave Sara a message to follow us there if she can.”

Hopefully, tonight would be a turning point. If only so something would ease the tension in the base. Getting a bad vibes filtration system installed in the foundry would be hell to explain.

***

“You don’t think this is some sort of trap?”

Only two buildings stood in the compound: the warehouse and the administrative building separated from it by a small parking lot. With the number of trees all but obscuring the facility from the road, the difficulty of spotting possible threats doubled. When Digg crouched down beside Oliver on the rooftop of the two-storey building, it was clear that he wasn’t completely sold on how real the supposed information was.

“We haven’t had any real leads since yesterday,” Oliver replied. “Without knowing where he brought those convicts or what he plans to do with them, focusing on the drugs is our best bet.”

He was tense, running over possible scenarios in his head. He knew Slade. He may have been warped by the Mirakuru, but his plans in Starling had so far proven that he was every bit as crafty as he’d been five years ago. He was a soldier and Oliver had an idea of what his end goal was; the madness had only added a touch of unpredictability to his scheming.

“No word from Sara so far, according to Felicity,” Digg murmured. He pulled out a pair of binoculars, focusing on the shadows of the warehouse entrance. “I don’t know, man, but my gut’s telling me we should be checking at least a few leads on the better-known escapees.”

“Lance and a couple of other officers started making house calls today. There are too many names to narrow down who could be in charge – aside from the obvious.” Oliver’s eyes darkened behind his mask. Getting worked up and frustrated wouldn’t do him any good. He had to focus.

Roy, who had been hiding behind one of the vents on the other side of the roof, crept over. He shifted carefully on sneakered feet, his left hand balled tensely on one knee. “Two vans pulling in from Starling. No distinguishing marks.”

“Digg, get back down to your car,” Oliver said, running through the best plan for their scenario. “We need eyes on the road. Roy and I are moving in for a closer look, so you’ll have to brief Sara when she gets here, too.”

When Felicity had called the Canary, she’d opted to head for the police station first instead to see if she could pick up something from her father about what was happening. It was a sound plan, and it ensured they wouldn’t be running blind, but Oliver couldn’t shake the notion that something wasn’t quite right about tonight at all. He had spent too much time in the last five, going six, years honing his instincts to become suddenly complacent.

It was just him and Roy on the roof now. They were waiting for the vans to come to a full stop, so they could make their descent and find a better vantage point.

“I owe you a ‘thank you’.” The younger man’s words caught him off-guard.

“For what?” Oliver asked. Though he could not see much of the boy’s face because of his hoodie, he thought he could see a determined frown in the faint light. Bringing the teen along on such an uncertain mission would not have been in the cards a few weeks ago, but his gut told him that he needed to keep him as close as possible. He had to help ground him and teach him to channel that rage before it turned to madness. He had made mistakes with someone in a similar situation before; he wasn’t about to allow the past to repeat itself.

“I almost skipped town last night,” was the quiet confession. “If you hadn’t told me we had training this morning, I’d have been getting settled in a room for rent somewhere in Bludhaven about now.”

“We do need you here,” Oliver said lightly, clapping him on the shoulder a moment before they scaled down the building and dashed through the shadows of the trees along the side of the parking lot. Over the years, he’d learned that it was always the small things that had the biggest consequences and made the most significant differences in the outcome of events. Even if one wasn’t sure exactly what those small things were at the time. He was all but certain that the important part here had to do with Roy staying in Starling, though.

Now more than ever, he needed his team. He needed Roy where he could see him and could help him fight the side-effects of the Mirakuru in his system. He hadn’t told Felicity or Digg, but part of the reason that he hoped the information about tonight was reliable was that he wanted a fresh sample. There had to be someone who would be able to synthesize the anti-serum that had been lost to the Chinese seas. If a cure could be found for Roy, then perhaps––

“Oliver, the police are not involved in whatever is happening there,” Felicity’s voice cracked on the comm. “Sara called from outside the police station and there is _no_ drug raid planned for tonight. Someone managed to mess with the scanner transmissions we received!”

Leaning on the outer walls of the warehouse, Oliver frowned, mind buzzing with non-answers. “How is that even possible? We’re hooked right up to the police frequency.”

He could hear rapid clicking and typing through the comm receiver. “It shouldn’t be doable. Not unless someone is disrupting _our_ internal systems. It’s not a hack, not as far as I can tell. I’ll have to go through the circuit boards and power grids, everywhere the wires run, manually.”

“That’s gonna have to wait,” Digg’s voice cut in. “I’m seeing some movement along the west side of that warehouse, Oliver. I’m going ahead and guessing they’re not cops.”

There wasn’t any time to ask their back-up where he was standing to be able to see that. Oliver caught a flash of muted red in the faint light, followed by the sound of shoes scuffing on the mixed concrete and dirt. Roy was fending off three different attackers at once and it looked like even the Mirakuru wasn’t enough to make up for his inexperience. No moment wasted, Oliver moved to nock an arrow and help him when something whizzed through the air just to his left. A tranquilizer dart was embedded in the wooden wall in the exact spot where his shoulder had been resting a moment before.

One of the men who had been trying to pin down Roy went sailing through the air right in front of him. The man bounced once on the concrete and stilled, limb akimbo like a discarded doll.

“Roy, no killing!”

That was all Oliver was able to shout before two more men came running across the parking lot towards him. Moving on instinct, he took a running leap towards the warehouse wall and launched himself leg-first at one of the new assailants, nocking an arrow to shoot and pinning the other man to the wall of the barn with it. Nearly a moment too late, he rolled out of the way as another one of the men jumped down from the warehouse window above him. He parried blows from two more goons, one he had thought he had knocked down earlier. His bow became more of a staff at close quarters, the steel of it good for cutting and thrusting at the grunts to knock them unconscious. He twisted, rolled, used their weights against them to balance and launch himself up to shoot arrows into their thighs and shoulders to incapacitate them. He tried to keep one eye on what Roy was doing, but he couldn’t make his way over quick enough to lend a hand. Two more tranquilizers came close to hitting his left leg. He grabbed one of the attackers as a human shield against a larger one about to punch him and the darts hit those two instead, rendering them limp and unconscious within seconds.

“The sniper’s good. I can’t locate his roost.” Digg’s voice cracked on the comms. From the sound of it, he had found and was dealing with a few more of the unknown thugs himself.

“Don’t let him get away!” Oliver rasped, taking out one of the in-coming men with an arrow to the shoulder just as another goon went skidding across the concrete by his feet.

Roy was starting to lose control and the threat of the tranquilizer darts wasn’t making things any better.

Preventing yet a third man from being slammed right up against the barn wall, Oliver shot a spark arrow into the ground near his companion’s feet, trying to snap him out of the rage mist. “I said, don’t kill them. Just keep from getting shot by those darts!”

“I’m _trying_!” The edge of an unnatural snarl in Roy’s voice meant there would be trouble if he couldn’t calm down by the time they finished here. He tossed his unconscious almost-victim to the ground and rejoining the fight.

A metal pipe nearly collided with Oliver’s ribs and he stabbed the attacker’s hand with an arrow in retaliation. More men had appeared; they were all unarmed, as far as he could see, but they were so obviously spoiling for a fight. Incapacitating them all or beating a quick retreat was quickly taking precedence over finding out exactly what their plan was. The hidden sniper would have to be Digg’s problem. Roy’s sharp shout drew his attention. The boy had been hit in the thigh by one of the darts and the tranquilizer in it was powerful enough to slow him down. He’d fallen to his knees and two thugs rushed in, taking the opportunity to work on kicking him unconscious faster. Oliver cursed under his breath, jumping up to use heads and shoulders to propel himself onto a pile of crates to shoot from. The men were trying to take Roy. Two arrows at once, Oliver aimed to immobilize one of them. He flipped off the crates, barely managing to use his bow to deflect a dart that had been aimed too close to his neck for comfort. The last few stragglers were running off, but he got one last arrow into the wiry figure running away from Roy’s side, pinning him in place on the ground.

“The sniper got away!” Digg reported in, his words ringing loud and clear in Oliver’s ear. “Caught a few goons and tied them down, but none of them had guns. That one shooter was all they had with them.”

“Hate to break the news to you, guys,” Felicity checked in again, “but you have three minutes – five, tops – to get out of there before the police arrive. I made a tip call to Detective Lance’s phone for mop-up.”

“What the hell did we walk into,” Roy slurred groggily as he tried to stand up. The tranquilizer was really strong; he could barely lift himself off the ground.

Twenty attackers all in all, Oliver tallied in his head. Maybe five or six more who had been protecting the sniper in the woods. “A trap,” Oliver said what had to have been on all their minds. “Whoever they were, they wanted us alive.”

“They planned it all pretty well,” Digg added, his comment coming in loud and clear on both the comms and out from the shadowy brush at once. He came jogging into view, hauling Roy carefully to his feet. The police cars were closer than Felicity had estimated, their sirens’ wails loud and clear in the quiet night.

Oliver was leaning over the man nearest Roy, peeling back his shirt sleeve to reveal the beginnings of a large tattoo. He noticed three face piercings and suspected he’d find more marks and brands on the rest of him if he were to look. Some of them, Oliver recognized as prison tattoos. And in his ear, there was a small comm device similar to the one the team used.

“Found something like that on the guys in the woods, too,” Digg said, helping Roy over to where Oliver was.

“Someone was telling them what to do,” Oliver concluded. He got to his feet, taking a look around. “I have a suspicion we just knocked out some of the missing Iron Heights inmates.”

***

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_Back in Starling, girls hadn’t been so confusing. That was the one thing that Oliver was certain of, two days after Shado had joined him and Slade in the old plane fuselage. He had gone less than five minutes thinking that they would be saving her, then spent every moment since believing that she was a better partner for Slade in surviving on this island than he ever had been. He had been able to sort of fix a radio and steal a circuit board in a missile launcher. Yao Fe’s daughter could fight so well that Slade – Mr. Badass King of Unimpressed himself – wanted to learn a few tricks from her. She also knew what Fyers was planning. No wonder Slade talked to Shado like he wasn’t even in the room._

_That had been before she’d volunteered to take a shot at teaching him to fight – and her method of choice had turned out to be making him spend more than half a day slapping at a bowl of water so that he could draw a bow. His fingers had never felt so pruney before._

_“Save some of that energy for tomorrow’s training, kid.”_

_Oliver looked up from where he was listlessly slapping a bowl of water to see Slade standing just behind him. Shado had gone to bed a while back, so the two of them were the only ones awake. The ASIS operative had left to do a quick perimeter check and Oliver had gotten bored. He’d taken a bucket and a bowl with him and gone to sit near the entrance to their hidden encampment. Now Slade was back and it would be a good idea to make sure the soldier never realized that his complacent companion had come out here in the open_ without _taking a weapon along._

_“I can draw a bow,” Oliver said with a shrug, slapping the water again. “Won’t know if I can shoot with it till tomorrow.”_

_“Shado seems confident you’ll learn.” Slade really must have been pleased with how the day had gone, since he opted to sit down next to the younger man instead of heading straight inside to rest._

_“And_ you’re _being incredibly optimistic,” he quipped back, grinning. The comment made him feel lighter, but it was natural by now to rib his teacher. “You sure you’re feeling okay, Slade? Feel a fever coming on or something?”_

_Sitting out in the semi-darkness, Oliver imagined seeing the flare of Slade’s nostrils and the narrowing of his eyes. What he didn’t imagine was the feeling of the hard rocky ground suddenly digging into his shoulder and cheek and Slade’s solid weight crushing down on his back and right arm._

_“You’re making good progress,” Slade rasped right into his ear. “But you’re far from ready yet.”_

_The almost-suffocating thick scent of wet earth and rock on a humid night offset the heavy animal musk Oliver had come to associate with Slade Wilson. He ran hotter than most people, possibly from all that muscle that made him so heavy, and Oliver could feel some of that excess heat seeping through the layers of their clothes. He couldn’t feel Slade’s heartbeat in this position, but he was aware that his own heart rate had gone up. He should have gone to bed when Shado had; now he was working up an adrenalin rush._

_Before he could gather his thoughts or come up with some way to wriggle free, Slade rolled off him, hauling him back into a sitting position._

_“Thought you were going to suffocate me, for a moment there,” he said, groaning and pulling back his aching shoulders. He looked down at the bowl on the stump in front of him. He supposed he’d had enough training for one day._

_“It would’ve put an end to your whining,” the older man replied. “And that foolish complacency and lack of a sense of self-preservation.” Slade sat with his back leaning against the outer wall of the fuselage, pointedly eyeing the area around the little impromptu training set-up – and the absence of any pistol or other weapon in sight._

_Sometimes, Oliver found that laughter was the best way to deal with his sour-tempered companion. He nudged Slade’s shoulder and slumped down a bit so they were level with each other. Sitting shoulder to shoulder, staring up at the tree tops and the stars was one of the few snatches of peace he had come to value on the island. “You’d miss me! It’d just be you and Shado. You’re both deadly and dangerous and everything, but you’d probably forget to loosen up at some point.”_

_It sounded almost forced in his own ears. He didn’t know why he’d said that, but the idea of Slade and Shado here, together, without him – it just didn’t sit right in his mind._

_One large, heavy hand gripped the back of his head, tugging him to turn to the side. “You’re not leaving us any time soon, kid.”_

_This was new. Heartbeat speeding up further, he couldn’t help but stare at Slade head on. What he didn’t do was try to pull out of his grip. “Shado’s a good teacher, but I don’t think she’s an actual miracle worker.”_

_“I’ll expect one good shot out of a hundred, then,” Slade grunted, the order thinly veiled in the casual comment and that rare but infuriatingly superior half-smile._

_Except, this time, his hand was sliding from Oliver’s nape to one of his cheeks. And Oliver was still not moving away._

_A bird suddenly launched from its perch, flapping noisily into the night skies. Wordlessly, the two men sat back, straightened, and went into the plane to sleep in their respective bedrolls._

_Come next day’s training session, when Shado laid her hand on Oliver’s chest and told him to give in to his senses and stop thinking, his mind teased him with that odd sensory moment when wet earth battled animal musk. When he found himself leaning down, his senses brought him back to the barest brush of thick, callused fingers against his stubbled cheek. He couldn’t kiss her._

_He alluded to Laurel – but she wasn’t the reason he needed a few moments to himself before he and Shado continued training._

***

“I secured this place as possible backup headquarters, in case the original one was compromised,” Oliver said, flipping the large light switch at the top of a short flight of stairs.

The new base was better lit than the one in the foundry basement. Lighter stone walls helped with that, as did the large square light boxes running on a covered electric grid across the floor. The ceiling was definitely lower in some places, but the overall floor space was still enough for both training and reconnaissance work. Still within the industrial sector, in one of the abandoned buildings just outside the destroyed portion of the Glades, it was the basement of a building that Oliver had bought through a dummy corporation with the help of some of his friends from his time out of the States. It was in no way affiliated with Queen Consolidated or anyone with the surname Queen, which would hopefully make it harder to trace.

It was already close to dawn as he led Digg, Sara, Felicity, and Roy down to what would be their new base of operations. He could have called it a night, set up this meeting for that evening instead, but time was not on their side. Immediate set-up of was crucial, or they would be at a terrible disadvantage when Slade made his next move. As it was, they had to wait till the sun rose before they could work on the sample of the tranquilizer formula the unknown sniper had used.

Felicity walked around in circles, trying to avoid tripping on some of the exposed wires. “Well, at least this is quieter. And I’ll know right away if someone’s slipped in an external receiver from a multi-regional dummy router into my systems to scramble and manipulate the feeds I get.” Her smile was thin, and faintly accusatory. Oliver couldn’t blame her. He’d started operations in the first lair before she’d joined them, and even after the upgrading she’d done there, she had told him before that she would have installed more security.

“Still no idea who could have bugged the old place?” Sara asked, checking the integrity of some of the older-looking columns with her hands. She’d gone to help Felicity search for what had caused the false information leak to get into their computers, since the men had been on their way back already from the warehouse excursion.

“We already know who’s behind it,” Roy muttered, leaning on the wall by the stairs. “How sure are we that Wilson won’t figure out where we moved?”

Oliver rounded a corner and pulled open an old filing cabinet, taking out a faded set of blueprints. He spread the topmost sheet on a table for them to look at. “This part of the city hasn’t been documented that well. Half the buildings on this block supposedly have their basements filled in. Including this one.”

Felicity turned away, saying something about taking the measure of what needed to go where, since she already knew about Oliver’s emergency purchases. After a moment, she called Roy and Sara over to get their opinions. Had he been in a lighter mood, Oliver would have affectionately joked that Felicity had gone into executive assistant mode. He’d just ignore her, too, if she remarked when she found the small futon bed he’d stashed away in the corner. At least if she saw that, she’d stop wondering where he spent his nights when he wasn’t at his family home or the foundry.

“It won’t be as easy to get things here,” Digg said quietly, still looking over the blueprints and the few other papers included about the building. “It’s not like the club, where you can explain all the crates as things for the business.”

Closing his eyes wearily, Oliver sighed. “I’ll have to make nice with the Bratva again or something to get us started up here quicker, but we’ll manage. I don’t want Felicity working alone in Verdant anymore.”

“Afraid something bad will happen to her?”

“I _know_ something bad will happen to her there,” Oliver said quietly. “Slade knows you, Sara, and Roy won’t be easy to catch. Thea and my mother are too high-profile to just kidnap. Hurting Laurel would draw Detective Lance into this – not to mention what Sara would do. Slade was the one who began my training. Everything I learned in the last five years wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t woken up the survivor in me.”

He had to stop there, the old memories threatening to come to the surface again. Yao Fe had saved him, Shado had given him a weapon, but Slade had carved him from the confused, lost boy he’d been into something else. And what had been between them was something he’d done his best not to think of in the years since.

“Oliver!”

Felicity came rushing over, expression tense and frazzled. She held out her phone, turning it so that the screen was facing him. “I was just checking if there was anything important today to see if we could just come in to work late. I found a copy of this in my inbox. It’s actually for you, from the Legal Department.”

If it wasn’t a dilemma on the streets, it just had to be one coming from the office. Skimming through the message and attachment, his expression went from confused to shocked to annoyed and settled into a sort of resigned regret.

“Isabel?” Digg guessed. He placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder, ever the anchor. “What happened now?”

“I suppose skipping the already-rescheduled board elections yesterday really did it,” Oliver said slowly, handing Felicity her phone back. “She’s filing an injunction against me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's bit was the hardest to write. Seriously. Though I'm writing in third person inner limited, I tried to follow what seems like her general thought patterns anyway. Did it work?
> 
> As I said last chapter, comments, crit, typo point-outs - all of these are completely welcome and appreciated!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to share this. I HAVE to. 
> 
> I met Colton Haynes!!! *fist-pump*
> 
> The first-ever AsiaPOP Comic Con happened in Manila this year, and he was one of the celebrity guests. DAMN, he looks way better to me in person than he does in the show. Must be the lack of make-up. And he is definitely less broody than the character he plays. Total lady-pleaser with all the blowing kisses and stuff he did. Solid guy to chat with though, too. Awesome three minutes of my life - and I get to keep the autographed picture too!
> 
> But anyway... that short meeting is what prompted me to add in a little more of Roy than originally planned in this story. Not a bad thing, no worries. Poor guy seemed underplayed in the series (Colton says he's still coming back to Arrow, btw, so that maaaay change!!!), so I'm giving him a bit of extra love.
> 
> Still doing edits on my own here, so all mistakes, yeah, all my own. Lemme know if I missed anything!

Sometimes, being back in Starling City didn’t feel real in the same way that the five years he had spent away from it certainly did. Sitting in the back of a company car, Oliver let his thoughts drift to simpler times. Simpler times, meaning times when he had needed to do nothing more than focus on staying alive and meeting his next mission objective. Family, friends, the company he’d inherited – sometimes, when he lay down alone in the quiet hours just before dawn, all these things warped and swirled into one large ball of needless complications.

“You surprised Felicity and Sara earlier,” Digg said from the driver’s seat, simply for the sake of conversation. He eased the car along the outermost lane just before an intersection and turned at the corner. “Leaving Roy in charge? Kid’s going to be a handful if he gets edgy.”

“Which is exactly why giving him that responsibility was a good idea,” Oliver replied, shifting in his seat and adjusting his tie in the rearview mirror. “The key to keeping the Mirakuru from overwhelming him is to make him focus. He knows how to secure a safe haven in the Glades and can orchestrate moving some of the equipment from the old base to the new one. Felicity can’t be there all day and Roy definitely knows the territory better than either her or Sara.”

Keeping Roy busy was also another way of making sure that he didn’t have second thoughts and try to skip town. He hadn’t said anything, but it was still obvious he was struggling with what the Mirakuru had done to him. His breakup with Thea was only an added stressor; he had already become erratic and easily turned destructive. He wasn’t a killer, but the drug that so readily whispered murder in his ears would make the fall too easy. That was, if no one helped steady him.

“We have to keep him from slipping.” Oliver was already thinking that it might be possible to take some of Roy’s blood and have it sent to a lab out of town for analysis. The longer the teen had the drug in his system, the more likely he would lose control.

“You managed to snap him out of the haze last night,” Digg reminded him. They were only a block away from Queen Consolidated.

“But for how much longer?” That was the real question.

At the next traffic light, Oliver’s bodyguard-cum-friend turned around and looked him square in the eye. “We take this one day at a time, got it? Roy and the girls will be there when we get back to base, but for now, you’ve got something more pressing to deal with.”

Isabel. When he’d returned from his self-imposed exile, he hadn’t expected having to work with someone like her. Now he had to figure out exactly what she had gone and done behind his back, and fix things. Taking the express elevator to the executive floors of the company building, Oliver steeled himself to deal with his business partner. He knew that he was technically in the wrong here, not attending to the company as he should, but the Arrow’s mission took precedence. Just as he stepped out onto the floor he shared with Isabel, he caught sight of her walking out of her office.

“Is it noon already?” she asked, zeroing in on him right back. She glanced down at her watch. “Oh, wow. Not even eleven yet. Your alarm must have accidentally gone off early today.”

“We need to talk,” Oliver said, ignoring the dig. He walked right up to her, holding the print-out of the legal documents in hand.

“If I’d known that filing an injunction against you was the best way to get you to pay attention to the company, I’d have done it sooner.” A smile was playing at the corner of Isabel’s lips, mocking him as it usually did.

“This isn’t funny,” he said, stepping even closer into her personal space. “The last thing this company needs is to be seen involving the courts in a minor misunderstanding.”

“Minor misunderstanding?” Isabel paused in her anteroom, ignoring the executive assistants trying to make themselves invisible in front of their bosses. “You haven’t been to more than a handful of board meetings in the last month and I can count on one hand the hours that you actually are in the office every day. Not to mention the time you blatantly spend away with your _assistant_. You made filing a case against you very easy.”

“It’s not too late to say we’ll settle this in-house,” Oliver stressed, ignoring the dig at his closeness with Felicity. He knew he shouldn’t have left himself open to this sort of crisis. He couldn’t take back his mistakes, but he was hoping that he and Isabel could still work everything out without dragging the name of Queen Consolidated even deeper through the mud.

He was trying so hard to hold in his frustration that he nearly missed the dark flash in her eyes. She glanced at something just behind him. “Perhaps there _is_ something you can do to prove how serious you are about protecting the company’s interests.”

Following her in through the frosted glass doors of her office, Oliver felt a distinct sense of dread settling in his chest.

“I’ve just been discussing some options with a potential investor,” Isabel said, stepping to the side to allow him in. “I believe you two are old acquaintances.”

“Old friends, actually. Hello, Oliver.”

Sitting comfortably in the armchair nearest the window, wearing one of those improbable tailored suits and holding a glass of neat bourbon in hand, was Slade.

All thought shut down in Oliver’s head for one excruciatingly long moment. His expression went flat as he forced himself to play along – to a degree. “Slade. I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised. You’ve been getting around a lot, lately.”

He tracked Slade’s movements with his eyes as the older man stood. He was very sure that he was looking at the person behind the ambush and attempted kidnapping the night before.

“Mr. Wilson has expressed interest in investing in Queen Consolidated,” Isabel explained. If she could sense the undercurrents of tension in the room, she wasn’t letting on. “We’ve been trying to work out the exact terms, but he’s mentioned that he would like to discuss things with you one-on-one as well.” She paused, that mocking smirk flitting across her lips again.

“Did he, now?” Oliver had yet to break eye contact. All his senses were focused on the man in front of him. Danger. Predator. Killer. Madman.

“Your timing today couldn’t have been better.”

Did she know something? Isabel didn’t seem the slightest bit perturbed by the way that the two men were looking at each other. She just stood there, as though all she wanted was to watch and see things unfold, as though she really thought that bringing the two of them together in one room would result in some sort of breakthrough for the company.

“Perhaps you and I could discuss things over a private lunch,” Slade suggested. His expression was neutral, bordering pleasant, but to Oliver, it was a mask to hide the madness and rage beneath. “We do have a bit of catching up to do as well.”

Isolate your enemy so you can confront him head on. It was a lesson from the early days of training on Lian Yu. Oliver had taken to that one easily and it was next to second nature for him now as the Arrow.

“Why not?” he said, a brief, thin smile on his lips. His stomach roiled dangerously. “This definitely is more pressing than signing a few papers at my desk.”

Isabel insisted on walking both of them down to the lobby and seeing them into Slade’s town car. If Oliver didn’t know better, he would have thought that she was flanking the ex-operative, helping him herd Oliver into a position he didn’t have any control over. Part of him scoffed that he was just being paranoid. But now the seeds of doubt had been planted, he needed to make time to research Isabel Rochev more thoroughly – if he got out of lunch with Slade unscathed.

“I managed to find one of the few places in Starling City that does good steak,” Slade said casually as the three of them walked out of the building.

“It must be really something if it impressed you,” Oliver couldn’t stop himself from replying. His memory automatically supplied a long-ago conversation on how Australians preferred their meat. He thought he had a lid on everything relating to their shared past, but the little tidbits couldn’t help but slip through.

The older man paused in the act of waving the driver off before he could open the door for them. For one brief moment, Oliver thought that he could see a glimmer of another man in this Slade Wilson’s one eye. He could have imagined it all; it was only for a moment and hope didn’t dare take hold in his chest.

“You can judge the place for yourself.” He stood at the door, waiting for Oliver to precede him inside.

There was no time to contact Digg and let him know what was happening. He knew his friend had been watching in the lobby, but he would not be able to get the car and follow quickly enough. Felicity could track where he was by locating his phone, but it would take time for Sara or Digg or even Roy to race over as back-up. If anything happened at this point, Oliver would have to handle it alone.

Their destination was a well-known steakhouse in a building a few blocks from Queen Consolidated. It had opened while Oliver had been away and was one of the places he was supposed to have visited with Tommy before everything had gotten out of control last year. A public place. A decent-sized crowd of civilians. Security cameras around the large room. It was the best and the worst place for a trap. By the time that they had placed their orders and had their drinks in front of them, Oliver felt like a tightly-coiled spring. He didn’t understand Slade’s angle enough to guess what he had planned.

“What I can’t figure out is how you got like this,” he finally said when the waiter had left them alone. “The Slade Wilson I knew wouldn’t be caught dead in a three-piece suit, let alone in a fancy restaurant in the middle of a large city.”

“You only knew me on the island,” Slade replied. “Just because a man can survive in the jungle doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to manage in a five-star restaurant or, if needed, in a boardroom.”

It stung harder than Oliver had thought that it would. He raised his wine goblet to his lips and pretended to take a sip to cover how his jaw and throat tensed. Sitting here with the other man, pretending that everything was normal, was taking its toll on him.

“I’m right about a few things about you,” he said, looking at the glass Slade held in one hand. It was all so surreal. “I always thought you’d be a bourbon kind of guy.”

“One of the few things I missed away from civilization.” It was Slade’s turn to take a sip, and _he_ didn’t seem the least bit tense or nervous as he did so.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Oliver tried again. He kept his voice low and his gaze focused intently on the other man. “You’re an ex-operative for ASIS, but here you are, offering both to back my mother’s mayoral campaign and to invest in my company. Ignoring the other reasons you and I both know you’re here in Starling, I think that’s a rather huge career shift to make within five years.”

A facsimile of a familiar amused smirk slid across Slade’s lips. “I learned quite a few things since you last saw me. Fortune sent me the right people to bring me to where I am now.”

It lasted only a second, but Oliver found himself imagining an alternate reality. The two of them escaping the island together. Slade coming to join him in Starling. The two of them walking to a Big Belly Burger for lunch. Blowing off steam with sparring sessions in the middle of an empty gym. Motor bike races at midnight for the sheer rush of adrenalin. In the middle of a club – him dancing with the crowds and Slade leaning against the bar, bourbon in hand, quietly watching. The wee hours before dawn, walking into a brick-and-glass apartment, collapsing on a wide leather couch ––

“Pardon me if I’m skeptical of what you mean by the ‘right’ people,” Oliver said, forcing the fantasy to the back of his mind. It didn’t belong here.

Slade just watched him through his remaining eye, index finger sliding along the side of his bourbon glass in the same way Oliver knew he used to slide it along a rifle trigger.

“They are what they are,” he replied steadily, setting the glass down. “They brought me to a table with you – no missiles or guns between us – didn’t they?”

More trigger words for a time he’d long shelved in the darkness of his past.

“I think there are still plenty of guns between us,” Oliver said. “I recall one hitting too close to its mark last night.” He realized he had unconsciously been leaning on his elbow closer and closer over the table, closer and closer to Slade. He knew he probably was drawing a few glances from the other diners, but it was difficult toeing the delicate balance between a serious conversation with a man he’d thought he’d killed and a harmless lunch meeting with a potential new business partner.

“Harmless either way, I’m sure you noticed.” Something familiar and superior flashed in Slade’s eyes again. “Even if the marksmanship was not the best.”

That put to rest one theory: Shade hadn’t been there last night after all. Oliver had toyed with the idea, but he knew the older man preferred a more straightforward approach to his takedowns.

“Keep Roy out of this,” he said, forcing the strength of the demand into his gaze. “My family, my friends, they don’t have anything to do with your promise.”

There it was. Oliver had been scrutinizing Slade’s face the last few times he had seen him, trying to gauge how far the madness had taken root in the man he had once known. Now he could see it. Slade had only one remaining eye, and it seemed like the full force of the insanity that consumed him was concentrated in that one dark point on his face.

“Be careful with your choices, kid,” he growled, a low rumble that Oliver alone could hear. They were both leaning over the table now, locked in an intense staring contest neither was inclined to break.

Except that Slade was still better at being sneaky than Oliver was. The younger man felt one callused finger brush along the side of his wrist. One feathery touch – but it felt like a white-hot brand. He looked down incredulously and saw that Slade’s hand was practically pressed up against his own on the table.

The waiter chose just that moment to come over with their food. Slade sat back in his seat, calm and unruffled. The glimpse of madness was gone. Oliver was left struggling to relax. And to fight the urge to clench the hand Slade had touched.

“Go on, try the steak. You’ll see I’m right.”

***

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_“Shado! Slade!”_

_Oliver stumbled through the wreckage of Fyers’ campsite, squinting through the fire and smoke. The sun had begun to set rapidly after the missile had gone down and he had been blown back in the aftermath of the explosion. He was still a little unsteady, but he needed to know if his friends were all right. Shado had told him to slot in the chip with the missile redirection, but he should have checked if she and Slade had gotten out of range first._

_He couldn’t be responsible for losing them._

_“Slade! Shado!”_

_He hadn’t had time to talk to Slade about anything yet. The operative had been cold when he’d caught sight of him returning to the fuselage with Shado. It was as though he’d been trying to turn back time to when they had first met and the younger man had been completely useless._

_Oliver had his suspicions that Slade had seen more than a snippet of the attempt at archery training. He refused to let things lie, not when they hadn’t even talked about what had happened the night before. What had nearly happened. They really needed to talk._

_He shook his head, reminding himself that shouldn’t be so fixated on that. Not when Fyers shooting Yao Fe point blank in the head would be burnt into his memory for the rest of his life._

_Nearly tripping over a rifle on the ground, he rolled and grabbed it out of instinct. It was crazy, how he’d become like this, so strongly wired for survival. He owed that mostly to Slade. Creeping along more quietly, he reached out for a long metal case. The rifle was handy, but the bow and arrows he found in the container were far more familiar after the last two days. He was still far from being an expert archer, but at least a bow did not assault his shoulder with a debilitating recoil burst._

_“I should have figured you couldn’t save the day without making a mess!”_

_Oliver nearly dropped the bow and the single arrow he was holding when Slade stood and stumbled out from behind one of the trucks. Shado was still nowhere in sight, but Slade whole and well, laughing at him again – it meant that everything was going to be just fine._

_“You never did train the sloppiness out of me,” he quipped back, walking over to offer the old soldier his shoulder as a crutch._

_“An oversight I mean to correct as soon as we find Shado and strip this camp of everything useful in it.” Slade leaned heavily against his side and Oliver found that he was tired enough to need a moment’s rest against the side of the truck, too._

_“Cut me some slack for about a week, then you can go all drill sergeant on me as much as you want!” The tired chuckle burst from his mouth unbidden. It felt good to be able to laugh about their predicament, even just a little. Who would have thought that they’d be able to use Fyers’ own missile against him?_

_He nearly stumbled forward from the strength of Slade’s hand slapping on his shoulder. “You’ve earned a break, kid.”_

_In the firelight, through the haze of the dissipating smoke, Slade’s face was all shadows and highlights. He was rough and scruffy, all soot-smudged with a small drying cut on his left temple. He looked satisfied, though. The corners of his eyes crinkled and his lips stretched in a wild sort of grin. He was proud. He was proud of Oliver._

_“We all deserve one,” his protégé said honestly. He allowed his body to sag just a bit more against the truck. He still had the bow and a single arrow in hand, but he was otherwise trying to relax. He closed his eyes and sighed, missing the moment when Slade moved. He blinked slowly when he found the soldier standing in front of him, nudging carefully between his legs with a knee._

_“You exceeded my expectations,” Slade admitted, looking at him with so many different emotions flying across his face that it was hard to tell what he was really thinking._

_Oliver became keenly aware that there was barely a hand span between them. Slade’s left hand came to rest on the side of his neck. Their breathing had synced up. In and out, in and out. Maybe their heartbeats were aligned now as well._

_“You and Shado have been good teachers,” he replied. His voice had dropped to a hushed whisper and his free hand found its way to Slade’s right shoulder._

_They were practically speaking against each other’s lips. He was keenly aware of that distinct musk beneath the smoke, that deep scent he’d come to associate with the other man. It was as though they were picking up exactly where they’d left off last night, but Oliver didn’t know what to do next. This was insane._

_He couldn’t say Slade initiated the kiss and he couldn’t say that he was the one who did, either. The two of them seemed to react at the same time, hands fisting in cloth and in hair, lips parting and teeth clashing. There was no finesse to it – just a ragged, adrenaline-filled need. Callused hands. A brush over sticky, drying blood. Rough stubble from days and weeks of lack of time and attention. They were pressed together chest to chest, hearts pounding almost to the exact same beat. Oliver tried to fight for control, but every time he pushed back against the twining of Slade’s tongue, he found himself beaten back, forced to just feel. A cut was forming on his bottom lip. He was being carried away on a wave of building lust and he couldn’t care less at all._

_Shooting Fyers in the chest with an arrow not two minutes later didn’t horrify him as it should. Shado was saved. He and Slade now had time to focus on exactly what had built up between them. And what it would mean in the days to come._

***

“Have you seen my brother?”

Thea Queen always got what she wanted. She knew that she was, in more ways than one, used to getting her way. After she’d lost her brother and her father, she’d begun spiraling without direction. She’d been even more lost when her brother had come back from the dead and had barely bothered offering up an explanation. She’d gained a nightclub that had given her some sense of responsibility. Then she’d gone and picked up a guy from the Glades who became her friend who became her boyfriend. And he’d broken up with her in the cruelest way possible – in order to keep hiding _something_.

She had a lot of questions and barely any answers. She wanted answers. And Thea Queen always got what she wanted.

Roy was standing just a few steps from the back exit of the club. Thea hadn’t seen him come in today, but it looked like he was trying to make his way out. He had a sealed envelope in his right hand, something he was trying to keep from drawing attention to. His ex-girlfriend knew enough of his tells, though. She knew he was likely keeping secrets. Again.

“Not since yesterday,” he said, shifting in that exaggeratedly casual way he did when he wanted to pretend things were normal. It would have worked – if he weren’t avoiding looking her in the eye.

She wasn’t sure which hurt more: their breakup or all the secrets he was still keeping from her.

“I know you two have been talking more,” Thea said, squishing down the whisper in her mind that it had likely been an attempt for _her_ sake. “You might even have a better idea than I do about where he actually is. He… Oliver’s not been home since the other night.”

As awkward and strange as it was to be talking to Roy about her problems with Oliver right now, he had become the only one she could confide in about a lot of things for the last few weeks. Whatever his reason for breaking up with her, she really did still want to keep him in her life.

“Maybe he’s busy with company stuff,” Roy said noncommittally. “He’s CEO, isn’t he?” He finally managed to look at her, leaning on the wall with his hand in the pocket of his jeans. But he was trying to keep the envelope out of her line of sight.

“Things are tense between him and Mom,” Thea replied, feeling her jaw tighten slightly. “But unless he’s got some sort of apartment or a hotel room he’s not telling anyone about, I don’t have any idea where he’s been spending his nights lately. He’s avoiding me, Roy, and despite your decision to end things between us, I still trust you to help me figure this out.”

Was that guilt flashing across Roy’s face? It wasn’t a new expression, really. Thea had been seeing it almost every time he was around her for the last few weeks. Oliver hadn’t seemed so concerned when she’d mentioned it to him. A thought occurred to her.

“…Look, Thea, I don’t know––”

“Oliver’s helping you with whatever it is you won’t tell me about, isn’t he?” she cut him off.

If she hadn’t been watching for it, she would have missed the sign. Roy’s throat tightened. He swallowed as slowly as possible. He was trying too hard not to give things away. It was how she knew she was right.

“Whatever is going on with you, I hope he can help you with it.” It still hurt to say that. They weren’t together anymore – Roy’s decision, not hers – but she hoped that her brother could help him get through it. Maybe when it was over, he’d tell her, or Oliver would. She wanted to be with Roy, but it would only be if he’d let her in again.

Her phone buzzed just then.

“…Something about Ollie?” she mouthed out loud, tapping a link one of her school friends had sent her. It directed her to a semi-serious celebrity news site. She could see Roy coming closer and unconsciously shifted so he could peer down at her phone too.

“Is Oliver Queen finally taking the family business seriously?” the article title read. Beneath it were the byline and the timestamp indicating the piece had been posted less than half an hour ago. A very clear photo appeared: Oliver was exiting a restaurant with none other than Mr. Wilson at his side. And it looked like Mr. Wilson’s hand was on the small of Oliver’s back. They were looking right at each other and both their expressions were difficult to read.

“What’s Oliver doing with _him_?” Roy blurted out. When Thea turned to look at him in surprise, she recalled that her ex had actually met her mother’s newest campaign backer. Had it only really been a week since they’d all been introduced at her home? It seemed an eternity ago, and the flash of tension across Roy’s face made her even more confused.

She just indicated the web article she had yet to properly skim. “Looks like he’s burying the hatchet. Whatever that means, since Oliver never did explain to me why he is – or was – so hostile to Mr. Wilson.”

For some reason, Roy started walking back towards the back exit even quicker than before.

“What’s wrong? Hey!” She reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, trying to tug him back. “Roy! Am I the only one who doesn’t know _anything_ around here?”

Roy stood absolutely still for a moment, and as Thea watched, he started breathing deeply. It was as though he needed to force himself to be calm. It did nothing for her nerves. She needed to understand what was going on.

“It’s not my place to say,” Roy finally said. He looked her in the eye and she was struck by just how much of a struggle she could see in the blue depths. “But Oliver said he was stranded on an island along the Chinese coast for five years. When could he have met Wilson?” He shook his head, as though that had already been too much. “I’ve gotta go.”

This time, she didn’t stop him from walking out the back door. His words froze her where she stood. Was it all that simple? However improbable and strange, had Oliver met Slade Wilson before he'd returned home to Starling? Why had he never mentioned it?

Thea looked at the bar and rubbed her temples. It was _her_ club. She could have just _one_ shot to dull her rising migraine. The moment she finally got hold of Oliver, there would be a _lot_ he had to answer for.

Before she could get to the bar area, though, a loud banging sound from the alleyway made her swivel in that direction. She grabbed a bat from behind the counter and rushed over as quietly as she could. Peering outside, she caught sight of Roy’s red hoodie. Her ex was _lifting_ a heavily-muscled man above his head, bodily slamming him into the dumpster. There were two more men trying to get at him. He swatted at them, taking them on as easily as though he were swatting flies. As she watched, he pulled his hand back to punch one of the men in the gut.

His eyes locked with hers. He froze mid-punch.

The next thing Thea knew, there were two darts protruding from the side of Roy’s neck. A third one hit a moment later, jamming right in through his jeans and into his left thigh.

“Roy!” she yelled, running out the door as he started to collapse like a house of cards right into the arms of one of the thugs. “Get your hands _OFF_ him!”

Swinging the bat as menacingly as she could, she tried to aim for the nearest man’s head. Valiant though the effort was, it proved short-lived. Something pricked at the side of her neck and she reached up woozily in time to feel the fletches on a small dart peeking out just above her blouse collar. The world started spinning and she could feel everything moving farther and farther away. She knew she was falling, but the sky looked like it was moving higher and higher out of reach. Everything was too bright and too fuzzy at the same time. She couldn’t feel anything.

“…leave her…”

Were the voices moving closer or farther away?

“...just the punk?”

Roy? Where was Roy?

“Our orders… stupid girl…”

She couldn’t keep her eyes open. She was so tired. Roy – he was the last thing she thought of before she blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't exactly intend it, but I found that writing Thea was a bit like writing on-island!Oliver. I only noticed when I'd read over my work after typing everything down.
> 
> But now we have better things to scrutinize than fraternal similarities. Only ONE Queen child has a serious case of sexual tension around a hot Australian operative.
> 
> Your thoughts, my dears, your thoughts! I'd love to hear you sound out what you think of this chapter!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was MURDER to write. I swear it was! For some insane reason, I had to do over next to every scene - EXCEPT the flashback. Now what does that say about where my brain is?
> 
> Chapter unbetaed, so alllllll mistakes, they're mine. 
> 
> Read and enjoy, dolls!
> 
> (EDITED: 14 October 2015)

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_Sweat dripped down the sides of Oliver’s face and soaked his shirt back and front. He didn’t care. He had his eyes trained on his opponent and his opponent’s weapons. Watch shoulders, not wrists. Don’t follow eye movement – not all the time. Avoid sudden leg swings and kicks. Defend constantly as you attack. Track the tension in thick muscled lines, the sudden bunching and relaxing of biceps, the beads of perspiration disappearing beneath dark, clinging fabric––_

_“AHHH!”_

_Oliver stumbled back, rubbing at his cheek where the rattan stick had smacked him. If only paying that much close attention to Slade’s shoulders (and consequently his straining arms and the tight stretch of his tank top across his chest) did not ruin his concentration._

_“You’re not the first to learn the price of distraction the hard way.” Slade chuckled as he grabbed Oliver by the shoulder to steady him._

_“You’d be out of work if I always paid attention,” the younger man replied. He liked to think that he’d only gotten distracted because he was tired from a full hour of training. When incredulity flashed across his mentor’s face, he headed off a rebuttal. “Beating the crap out of me is your job, isn’t it?”_

_“Cheeky brat!” A sound between a growl and a laugh echoed in the fuselage as Slade dropped his sticks and grabbed Oliver into a headlock. That began a round of wrestling between them, a tussle that involved a lot of arm and leg locks while rolling on the ground._

_It had been four, going five, months since they’d gotten rid of Fyers and his men. Life had settled into a strange sort of domesticity. Between Slade and Shado, Oliver was turning into a proficient if still-unpolished fighter. He could hold his own against either of them for at least a minute now without getting pinned or smacked to the ground and he was no longer relegated to just trap checking and fruit gathering expeditions. He’d been the one to shoot the small sambar deer they’d made meals of last week. A year ago, he would never have even imagined this life. A year ago, he would not have been content with gathered fruits and unseasoned meats, threadbare clothing foraged from a deserted camp, and a somewhat lumpy bedroll tucked into a corner of a sometimes-leaky plane fuselage. Now he was something close to content.  
_

_He wound up pinned to the ground, Slade’s knee pressing into his stomach as the soldier locked his wrists above his head. The press of that solid, hard body above him had become acutely familiar over the past few months._

_“You win,” he said simply, heart beating so hard that he could feel it in his throat. He wasn’t surprised that his voice was thick with want._

_Their lips connected. Slade slid his knee between Oliver’s thighs and pressed down on him. They twisted slightly on the ground so their legs intertwined and their hips shifted flush together, synced up in an agonizingly slow grinding motion. Oliver’s wrists were still bound in Slade’s tight grip and the operative’s free hand was fisted in his shirtfront. They were both breathing hard through their noses as they rubbed the growing erections in their pants together. It was Oliver who broke the kiss with a snappy bite to Slade’s bottom lip. He tried to nip along the other man’s jaw, but he was beaten back when his partner’s mouth descended on his sweat-salty neck. His hands were suddenly free and he was shoving them under Slade’s shirt, circling his waist to knead along the dip of his spine, the ever-shifting muscles between his shoulder blades, and the curve of his ass through his pants._

_They had never gotten around to talking about what they were doing. With everything that had become of their lives, it just became easier not to._

_Oliver was close to coming. It seemed improbably that he would find himself at the brink of release from just rubbing off full-clothed against another man, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened in the last few months. Each time, it just became easier and easier to fall into whatever this was. Their rough kiss after the missile had blown up Fyers’ camp had marked the beginning of many late-night make-out sessions. At some point, they had started rubbing each other off, a man’s hands knowing what to do with a man’s dick instinctively. They’d started touching more, continuing the pattern shirtless or fully nude during quick baths in the river. The first time Slade had given Oliver a blow job had been when the erstwhile city boy had shot down his first game bird with an arrow. It had been a little on the boney side, but the ASIS agent had still deemed it deserving of a midnight reward. The first time Oliver had returned the favor was after Slade had pulled him back from the edge of a waterfall when they’d gone scouting together. He had shoved Slade against a tree and gotten down on his knees to thank him thoroughly. Three nights ago, Shado had gone to hold a solitary vigil beside her father’s grave, and that had been the first night the two men had stretched out together naked on joint bedrolls. It had been the first time that Slade’s fingers had teased behind his balls and swirled questioningly around the puckered hole of his ass. They hadn’t gone any further, but today, it was that remembered sensation that drove him almost to the very edge of release._

_“Oliver? Slade?”_

_Shado’s voice called out loudly from somewhere outside, checking if they were within. It was easy to hear the carefully weighted steps she wouldn’t have taken if she’d heard the erratic smacking of the rattan sticks from their training._

_Oliver pushed Slade off him and rolled to the side, breathing heavily to cool off. He saw his companion heaving himself to his feet, adjusting himself in his pants. They shared a look; they’d be continuing this come evening._

_That was the plan until the proximity detector went off and they found that they were no longer the only people on the island._

***

“How did you survive?”

Oliver _knew_ rationally that Slade was dangerous. He was the killer who had taught him to be a killer. He was the tactical genius who had first taught him to survive in a hostile environment. There was so much more to him, but those two truths should have been enough to make Oliver wary of sitting less than a foot from him in the back of a car. And yet, curiosity still won over caution.

He sat angled facing away from the window so that he could watch the play of emotions on the former operative’s face. Not that there was much to see. Still, he was hopeful, since the glass divider separating the driver’s side of the car had been raised to afford them some sort of privacy. They could be seen but not heard.

“The Mirakuru has astounding regenerative properties,” Slade replied, not a hint of emotion even in his one eye. “I could feel the currents in the reef ripping me apart, but my cells regenerated rapidly enough for me to swim for another island, and from there make my way to the mainland. There was only one thing the drug could not heal.”

The eye patch both covered up and drew attention to Oliver’s crime. Instead of finding something to make Slade snap, it was Oliver who was forced to look away.

Guilt forced him to look away.

“You coming here doesn’t change a thing,” he finally said. “The past stays in the past.” Starling City and her thriving populace surrounded them; after last year, he couldn’t allow his home to become collateral damage in another man’s misguided crusade. How personal that crusade was didn’t matter at all. It shouldn’t.

“You say that because you don’t understand.” Slade’s reply came coupled with a hand curling over his knee.

Oliver turned sharply, heat spreading through his body from the point of that firm but careful grip. They were still at opposite ends of the car, but Slade’s hand was enough to nullify the sense of distance.

“You will, soon enough. And then Shado will finally understand that you were _never_ hers.”

Alarm bells rang in Oliver’s mind and his eyes widened and narrowed in succession. He recalled an instant, just a suspicious moment all those years ago, when he had thought Slade might be hallucinating just as Sara had said he would. He didn’t want to ask for clarification. He didn’t want to have to confirm how different this man was from who he had been before.

The similarities mixed in with the changes were a special kind of pain on their own.

Looking back out the window instead of replying outright, Oliver pushed off the hand on his leg and thought back to their strained lunch. They had actually discussed business. It had been unnerving to learn that Slade had gotten so much information on the market scores and stock records for Queen Consolidated over the last few years. The talk about possible investments had gone on for a while, but it was difficult to know if it was just idle conversation or if Slade was really looking to buy shares. The donations to his mother’s mayoral campaign were solid, but Oliver was still skeptical. It was a good front, though. They hadn’t had more than a few minutes alone at a time, once the restaurant had filled up. Many of the other guests knew them both (it was in itself alarming that Slade had ingratiated himself so easily into the Queen business circles) and had stopped by to talk. When they had finally gotten the check – Slade had somehow beaten him to paying – and stepped outside, he’d noticed too late that the older man had a hand on his back. Past and present were blending in a way that he wasn’t sure how to confront.

“I never belonged to anyone on that island,” Oliver finally said, turning back to look at Slade. They were still a few minutes away from Queen Consolidated and he needed to get all of this out before then. They were as alone on fairly neutral ground as they were ever going to be, and this was the only time he was going to speak about what had ended a long time ago.

He hadn’t counted on Slade practically pressing him against the window, a hand again on his knee. The other one had snaked around the back of his head, drawing him in closer.

“That isn’t how I remember it,” the former soldier rumbled. It was a sound from another life, and it rendered Oliver as immobile as it had when he had first heard it directed at him this way. “And I’ve spent the last five years thinking about Lian Yu.”

“Let go, Slade,” Oliver said quietly. He didn’t trust himself to argue. He was boiling inside, angry at being placed in this position. He could not see any way that they would not devolve into a physical fight if they had _this_ particular conversation. It was a miracle that his hand did not shake while he pried Slade’s fingers off his knee again.

They were too close. _This_ was too close to something that he had thought dead and buried deep at the bottom of the Chinese seas. It was so hard to breathe. He was suffocating on that ridiculous cologne, wishing he could just smell the earthiness that he associated with Slade underneath it all. But maybe this was better. The cloying scent grounded him in the present.

“We are _far_ from done here,” Slade whispered almost against his lips. “I keep my promises.”

Those words gave him the strength he needed to twist to the side and push the other man away at the same time. They were turning at the corner of the street to the Queen Consolidated building. Within moments, the car was pulling to a stop in the driveway and he beat the driver to opening the door.

“I won’t allow you to,” Oliver said, getting out of the car. He determinedly did not look back.

He gulped in the different smells in the city air, standing just outside the lobby and forcing himself not to shudder. For a moment, he closed his eyes. He needed to push down whatever had just happened and focus on righting things with Isabel. The sooner he did that, the sooner he could make adjustments so that he could go back to finding out what Slade was really doing. But just the thought of his name sent Oliver’s mind back to the last two hours. The last few minutes in particular. He wasn’t sure what emotion he struggled against the most: anger, guilt, or shame. A small voice in the back of his head whispered a fourth answer he was refusing to acknowledge.

“Oliver?”

Laurel called out to him from just inside the glass doors of the lobby. She came striding outside, and right after her came Digg. They had almost identical worried frowns on their faces.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” he asked, plastering his most carefree smile on his face. Discreetly, he nodded at Digg; they’d have a long discussion about contingency plans later in case there was a repeat of what had happened today.

“Felicity called me,” Laurel said, pulling out a folder from her bag. “She said it might be a good idea for you and me to have a little talk over coffee. Something about your company filing an _injunction_ against you?”

Another person he would have to talk to today. Felicity cared about him, but she was pushing a bit too far lately. At the very least, she’d be another distraction to keep him from thinking too much about what had happened in that car. “Hey, it’s not a big deal. Isabel and I just need to iron out a few things and we’ll laugh about this later over a few rounds of vodka.”

Hopefully without the falling-into-bed-together part again. The first time had been a Herculean task to pull off, and he wasn’t keen on a repeat. Ever.

“This is serious, Oliver! You can’t be the public head of a billion-dollar corporation and neglect your responsibilities.” There it was: the familiar Laurel frown of disapproval. In another life, he would have focused on her lips, on that little pout that had once looked so kissable to him.

“Look, Laurel, I really don’t have time for a lecture right now,” he replied testily instead. “If it makes you feel better, I just got back from lunch with a possible investor. Isabel should definitely be in the mood to compromise.”

“Ms. Rochev left the building about thirty minutes ago,” Digg cut in, finding his opening. He was being formal, hamming up his cover as Oliver’s driver and bodyguard, but it was obvious that he was only just barely managing. “I was waiting in the lobby with Ms. Lance here when she walked past.”

Somehow, Oliver didn’t think that information meant that he could sneak back out to help with relocating the Arrow’s base of operations.

“Looks like we have time to discuss saving your ass after all,” Laurel said smoothly. She already had a firm hand on his arm and a tight smile on her lips. Once upon a time, Oliver had found it hot that she was hard to deter from something she wanted. Right now, he really wished she would just know when to back down.

Digg drove the two of them to a small coffee shop a few blocks away from the office. It was walkable, but Oliver suspected his friend wanted to make sure that he could be around in case something happened again. He was just glad that there was no sign of Slade’s town car anywhere nearby. A small, paranoid voice in his head still whispered that it was possible that the ex-operative was spying on him.

“It’s going to be about convincing your partner _and_ the board,” Laurel said as they carried their coffee cups to a table. She nodded at Digg, who was positioned discreetly at the bar area nearer to the door. “You’re the one clearly in the wrong here so you’re the one going to have to make the concessions. How sure are you that meeting just _one_ investor will be enough to change Isabel’s mind?”

Oliver had his suspicions, but he didn’t want to say anything until he knew for sure just what game Isabel Rochev was playing.

“I think I’ve done enough today to stall, at least,” he said as casually as he could.

Laurel sighed, twisting her cup in her hands. All the while, she looked right at him and tried to gauge his sincerity. “Corporate law isn’t my forte, but I do have special experience dealing with Oliver Queen’s brand of bullshit. I’m here if you need me.”

They shared a smile and a quiet laugh about that. Oliver almost felt like things were back to the way they had been before he had vanished from Starling. He couldn’t think back to that night he’d spent with Laurel last year, not with the memory of Tommy’s death attached to it. He preferred to think about the way things had been when they’d been younger and more carefree – even with what had been going on with Sara behind Laurel’s back.

“Oliver…are you okay?”

Laurel was still looking at him like he was a puzzle she was trying her hardest to solve.

“Need an answer on official record?” he teased to keep things light.

“It’s not about the injunction,” his girlfriend of a time long gone clarified. “Sara was at my place a few nights ago. We were trying to do some reconnecting.” She laughed a little wanly at that. “Somehow she ended up mentioning you and… Look, we didn’t go into details, but she said that you’re not coping well lately.”

That Laurel had decided to be vague only meant that Sara had been vague to her when they’d talked and now she wanted straight answers from the person she thought could provide them.

He’d take talking about the injunction over this any day.

“It’s just been…pretty difficult, running the company after everything that’s happened,” he finally said, trying to smile between sips of his coffee. “Business wasn’t ever exactly my area of expertise and I really just don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Are you sure it’s just that?” Laurel hadn’t let up. She was still looking right at him, lips pressed into a thin line.

“I’ll be fine.” It was the best answer that he could give her.

Once, he had loved Laurel. He’d loved her in his own way and for the longest time, thinking about her had kept him going. Life had been simple then: grappling with mixed feelings in a set environment with so few factors to take into account. Once, he’d thought that Laurel understood him better than he understood himself – and still loved him despite all his flaws. But that time was long past. So much had changed, and he believed the most profound changes had happened to him.

For a moment, he thought there was an argument brewing. But Laurel perhaps had too much on her mind as well. She just smiled a tight resigned smile at him. “Okay. Just remember, if you need someone to talk to, you’ve got my number.”

As though mentioning her, even if only in passing, could summon her presence, Sara’s name appeared on the screen of Oliver’s phone. What she had to say when he took the call made his throat dry up and his heart drop to his stomach.

“Ollie, where are you? I just took Thea to Starling General. She’s unconscious.”

***

Thea was sleeping. Her chest rose and fell at a regular rate, her lips were slightly parted, and she was all but completely relaxed. The IV drip in her arm wasn’t even a fifth empty. She looked peaceful. The doctors had said that she just needed to naturally sleep off whatever drug she had ingested. Bloodwork results would be in by the next morning, but what was important was that she was alive and unharmed.

It was a miracle that Sin had found her in the alley when she had. Sara was even gladder that Sin had called her to get the unconscious girl to a hospital without fanfare. It was a lucky break that the press hadn’t gotten hold of the story.

“She’s been like this for the last two hours,” Oliver said quietly from his place by the bed. He was holding Thea’s hand, eyes focused on the window in thought.

“We don’t even know how long she was out before Sin found her,” Sara replied. “If she was hit with the same sort of tranquilizer we took samples of at the warehouse, there’s no telling how long she could be unconscious.”

“The sooner the doctors or Felicity can get answers on the compound she was shot with, the better.” The darkness in Oliver’s tone was bordering on the alarming. He loved his sister, but he hadn’t looked this grim in so long. The last time had been five years ago, and she didn’t like the comparison.

“We’re not sure it was Slade’s men who did this,” she murmured to him in as low a voice as possible.

Laurel was somewhere outside, getting coffee and talking to her father at the police station over the phone while Digg was trying to get ahold of Roy. They had to be careful what they said in case there were nurses or other people around. They needed Roy here, though. They were all hoping that he could shed some light on what had happened, since Felicity had said he had left her alone at the new base to get some documents at Verdant. But he hadn’t been anywhere near the club when Sin had found Thea.

“It was them.” The vicious conviction in Oliver’s voice drew her back to the room. “What isn’t clear is exactly what they thought they were going to achieve doing this.”

In Nanda Parbat, Sara had learned to bottle her emotions so that they would not hinder her on her missions. She hadn’t learned that lesson well enough by the standards of the League. She had gone to check on Laurel in Starling City in the end. It was because of this that she understood how Oliver’s own training colored his judgment. He was likely running on that training today, the very first lessons he had received from the one man he now held accountable for his sister’s assault.

She wanted to reach out to him in some way, but to remind him he was not alone in this didn’t seem enough anymore.

“I can’t reach Roy’s cell,” Digg announced, entering the room and walking straight up to the bed so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice. “Felicity traced it to a subway station on the east side of the Glades, but it doesn’t seem to have moved from there.”

“Roy doesn’t have it,” Oliver said, getting to his feet. A cold flash of realization had just struck and something even closer to dread welled up in his chest. “If we check out the alleyway ourselves, what are the odds that we’ll find signs of a struggle with someone other than Thea?”

“You think she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?” his friend clarified, frowning down at the sleeping girl. “Not that I’m complaining, but why wouldn’t they take her, too?”

“The Mirakuru increases the rate at which the body metabolizes and burns substances in the bloodstream,” Sara said. The explanation was over five years old but it was still burned into her memory. “Keeping Roy drugged, subdued or not, would have been difficult with Thea along. Even if they held a gun to her head.”

She could tell that was what Diggle had been thinking they would have done to the teens, but she knew better. She had seen how dangerous a man with the miracle drug could be, and Roy’s kidnappers had clearly been fully briefed.

“We have to find him,” Oliver said suddenly. He looked down at Thea, then at his two companions. With Felicity’s computers mostly up and running at the new base, they would be able to monitor a sizable number of the city’s cameras and other location data they could access on digital servers. Sara could see the cogs turning in his mind, the plans like neon signs above his head. He’d not been this much of a tactician before, but she suspected that while she had been with the League, he’d found ways to build on the foundations Slade and Shado had laid.

Sure enough, Oliver was ratting off instructions. Sara nodded, only half-listening. She had left the bedside and gone to the door to see if Laurel was there. She already knew the drill and had been thinking about reporting the likely kidnapping to the police anyway, even if they had to fib a bit to get the department to act immediately.

“Did Thea wake up?” her sister asked, rounding the corner and heading right for her.

“No change,” Sara told her, stepping fulling into the hall and tugging her a little ways off. Now it was time to lie. “Not exactly. She murmured something in her sleep. She was calling for Roy.” Memories of how she had been taught to playact while in training for League missions pushed her forward. She adopted the most indecisive frown she was capable of. “We think that she might have barely escaped a kidnap attempt.”

“But Roy didn’t,” Laurel concluded. “How sure are you? It just doesn’t make sense for someone to take a kid like Roy and not go after Thea _Queen_.”

“Felicity got in contact with him earlier today,” Sara continued, adding a bit of truth to bolster the lie. “She asked him to pick up something for Oliver at Verdant. It looks like Roy did go there around lunch time, but he never found his way to where Felicity was supposed to meet him. He might have convinced the kidnappers that the papers he had were worth more than the ransom for a billionaire’s sister and mayoral candidate’s daughter.”

“I know it’s asking a lot, Laurel,” Oliver said, coming out of Thea’s room with Digg in tow. “But could you stay here with my sister until our mother arrives? Digg and I can head over to Verdant to check the area ourselves and it might be a good idea if someone on the force met up with us there.”

Laurel looked at Sara, but before she could say anything, the younger woman faked a sheepish smile. “With Thea here, someone has to stay on top of things at Verdant. I’m just the new bartender, but the rest of the staff knows I’m a family friend. The last thing we want is Thea waking up to a missing friend _and_ a club in chaos.”

The odds were slowly getting stacked higher and higher against them, Sara thought as she and the men headed for the exit. The longer this went on, the more certain she became that Oliver would have to come clean about exactly what Slade Wilson had been to him – before they started missing even more crucial information and someone important to them ended up dead.

***

“You are exactly the sort of kid I would have guessed the Arrow would choose to mentor.”

In the center of some sort of strange computer lab or emergency room, Roy lay strapped to a cross between an operating table and a dental chair. His hoodie and shirt had been missing since he’d woken up an hour ago. The last thing he remembered before that was an ambush in the alley behind Verdant. He’d managed to hide the envelope he had been sent to retrieve, but the thugs had been more interested in trying to subdue him than what he had been carrying. He’d tried breaking the cuffs holding him in place, but they were made of a material he couldn’t even dent. The table itself seemed to be bolted to the floor. When he craned his neck, he found several tubes and what he guessed was medical equipment behind him. Five more normal-looking operating tables were arranged to his right. Somehow, seeing them empty seemed foreboding. Instinct told him that this was only the beginning of whatever was going to happen to him. The sooner he could escape, the better he’d feel. A fuzzy part of his mind hallucinated that Thea had run out of Verdant to help him, but he was choosing to believe that she hadn’t. The alternative would be much, much worse. She could be here with him, at the mercy of a madman Oliver had clearly not given anyone enough warning about.

“Your eyes are full of pain,” Slade Wilson said, talking as though Roy were actually involved in the conversation. “You hold yourself like you’re guilty of something you’re keeping to yourself. Ripe for the picking. He chose perfectly.”

Roy refused to be baited, staring straight up at the ceiling. All that he could do was bide his time and wait for an opening to escape. Wilson had entered the room only a few minutes ago, just as he’d stopped trying to break the cuffs. The man behind the madness now in his bloodstream had been observing him and making all sorts of comments as though they were having an actual conversation. Roy’s jaws clenched as he tried to get a read on him. He focused on the strange way that the supposed ex-agent was talking about Oliver. It was like he was _proud_ of him.

Wilson was suddenly standing by the table. He held a needle in hand, attached to a tube. Roy wasn’t the expert on medical equipment, but he bet that the machine the tube was attached to would do something to his blood. He’d stopped thinking this could be a simple kidnapping minutes after he’d seen what kind of room he was in.

“If you know him so well, you won’t be surprised when he figures out wherever it is you’ve taken me,” Roy finally said. There was something completely unnerving about Wilson. He wasn’t quite right in the head, from the way he spoke. Roy wasn’t sure why Thea and her mother hadn’t noticed, but to him, Wilson talked like a man half-floating on drugs.

A cold bolt of dread shot up his spine at the thought that _he_ might end up like this as well.

“For all his cleverness, Oliver Queen is still a novice in the shadows,” Wilson said. “He will exhaust all his contacts and comb through the most likely locations before he even realizes that we are in the very bosom of his company.”

Lapsing back into quiet, Roy tried not to give his kidnapper any more reason to gloat. He stared up him, silently defiant, even when Wilson pressed the needle into his arm and taped it in place. When his blood started flowing through the tube, he tried to go completely lax, hoping that would somehow slow it down. A kid from the homeless shelter near his apartment had claimed that’s what his doctor cousin said would work.

“This one’s trying to be a stoic,” Wilson murmured. “Oliver used to be much mouthier.” Strangely, his eye was focused not at Roy, but across the table. There was no one else in the room.

“Sounds like you’d prefer to get your hands on him instead of me,” the teen said. He smirked when Wilson looked back down at him, breaking whatever unnerving staring contest he had been having with thin air.

He stopped smirking when a large hand wrapped around his throat. Then he started thrashing. The cuffs held him almost completely immobilized, the needle was funneling more and more of his blood into the tube to the machine, and he could barely breathe. He could feel his windpipe constricting. He looked up through hazy black spots in his vision to focus on the madness-hazed eye of a man who was slowly but steadily trying to choke him to death.

And then it all stopped.

Roy’s eyes were burning with tears as he tried to cough and gasp for air at the same time. He was suddenly so very tired and his head pounded with a forced rush of blood. He nearly missed what Wilson said.

“Keep quiet and stay useful; maybe you‘ll survive to the end of this yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A part of me REALLY wants to write in Slade's perspective here somewhere. But that would be giving away QUITE a bit of the plot of this part of the story so I must restrain myself.
> 
> We're doing a weird deviation/parallel with the original story-line still but am so far happy with the rate everyone's trying to crack down on Oliver's secrecy and denial.
> 
> Questions:  
> \- What do you think Thea's going to do when she wakes up?  
> \- How damaged will Roy be after this mess?  
> \- Are you guys counting down the chapters till Ollie and Slade kiss in the present OR till they find a bed/couch/floor?  
> \- Am I the only one now kind of laughing at Oliver's woman troubles?
> 
> Till next time! :)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This new chapter is a DOOZY! It's about... nearly 2,000 words longer than the last one, because I added a scene I wasn't supposed to.
> 
> So, for the sake of continuity, here's a little summary guide of the last few chapters so you can sit and marvel with me at how LITTLE time has passed (and how BAD a time of it Ollie has been having!). The story started off at the end of Episode 17 of Season 2, when Helena Bertinelli went to jail. Since then...
> 
> Day/Night 1 - Helena's arrest, board vote move, missed debate, Iron Heights bus breakout (Chapter 1)  
> Day/Night 2 - Roy's training, the warehouse escapade, missed board vote, move to new base (Chapter 2)  
> Day/Night 3 - lunch date with Slade, Roy's kidnapping, Thea's hospitalization (Chapter 3 to present)
> 
> This chapter is unbetaed, so, as usual, all mistakes are my own. Feel free to point out any if you see em!
> 
> END SCENE EDITED: 23 October 2015

“…and the tire tracks looked like ones from some sort of delivery van.”

Oliver knelt down by the dumpster in the alley behind Verdant, nodding as Sin finished her story. He, Digg, and Sara had just arrived on-scene a few minutes ago and the girl had been waiting for them inside. She hadn’t left after Sara had picked up Thea and taken her to the hospital. Instead, the street-smart teenager had done some snooping while waiting for her unofficial guardian to return with company.

“Sin didn’t miss very much,” Digg said, coming back from the edge of the alleyway, pictures of the tire tracks on his phone. “Whoever they were, they barely covered their tracks. The police should be able to help with tracing this when their detectives get here – if it doesn’t get too dark to see anything by then.”

“For now, let’s be glad they’re late,” Oliver replied, getting to his feet and dusting off his pants. He glanced pointedly at the dumpster, which had a sizeable dent they were going to have quite a bit of trouble explaining.

The rest of the place looked and smelled normal, half-neglected and dim and cold like any other alley in the Glades. Keeping it clean by the back entrance was part of the club staff’s responsibilities, and aside from the heavy boot prints and the dented dumpster, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the narrow space between Verdant and the building next to it. Oliver looked back down at the nearest of the footprints. One of the likely kidnappers was heavily built, bigger than him, if the depth of the prints were anything to go by. He thought he could see the patterns, when the walking had become running and when Roy had likely picked one of them up like a rag doll. The ground was hard and wet, not as muddy or filth-covered as he’d need to see what had really happened.

“You really think whoever knocked out Thea kidnapped Roy?” Sin asked, rubbing at her arms through her jacket to ward off the afternoon chill.

How much did the girl really know? How much should he tell her? Oliver looked at her tough little face carefully, assessing the street cunning in her wide eyes. Sin had been privy to the identity of the Canary before Oliver had even known Sara was still alive. He had never allowed her into the base beneath Verdant and she never pressed for answers, even with Roy, but it was very likely she already knew just how Oliver spent his nights. Too many people knew his secret already; he didn’t want another teenager tangled up in his mission, not with how much more dangerous it had become recently.

“It could have been the people who shot him up with the Mirakuru drug in the first place,” Sara took the decision away from him when she appeared in the doorway. “Sin, what’s this? I found it on the bar counter.” She was holding up a crumpled envelope with some sort of water stains along one corner.

“That was shoved behind the dumpster when I got here,” the teen explained, pointing to the corner where she had found it. “I didn’t know what to do and Thea wasn’t moving at all, so I just put it on the bar after I got her inside.”

Oliver shared a look with Digg and Sara. Roy _had_ been here. It made no sense for his abductors to have hidden an envelope they had no idea about, but their young companion would have known it was important to keep it safe.

A police car pulled up at the head of the alley just then, and Sara stepped back into the club with the envelope behind her back.

“Don’t mention it to the police,” Oliver murmured to Sin before turning to greet the lawmen. He knew their faces, but not their names. As he had technically just arrived with Digg and Sara, they wanted to prioritize interviewing Sin and taking a good look at the alley.

They wouldn’t find anything that he and his companions hadn’t. As they all headed inside the club, the vigilante trio made their way to the bar, ostensibly to allow the detectives space to talk with Sin in peace.

“Felicity can monitor the forensics team’s findings on the truck wheels and the boot prints,” Digg murmured quietly, leaning on the counter. “I doubt it will turn up much, but she may catch something they miss.”

“We’ll have better luck with ATM camera footage,” Oliver said, pretending to browse the liquor bottles behind the counter. “One of them will have caught that truck pulling up, and we might even see them dragging Roy onto it.”

“I don’t like the ‘maybe’ overtones here, Ollie,” Sara added her misgivings. She traced over the damp front of the envelope she was holding. “We’re lucky Slade’s guys didn’t take this. We’re trying to be careful moving the equipment to the new place, but the deeds in here would have been a dead giveaway.”

It had been a stupid errand to send Roy on, Oliver thought. If he hadn’t gone to Verdant for the hard copies of some of their building papers, he wouldn’t have been in Slade’s sights. Now, every resource they had would have to be split between locating him and finding out what their enemy’s next move was. The problem was, Oliver wasn’t so sure those were two separate things. His chest clenched painfully and his mind swirled. Now was not the time to get angry.

“I’ll have to make contact with the Bratva,” he said, voice rough. He needed more eyes and ears on the streets as soon as possible.

“You sure you want to deal with them again?” Digg asked. “You said your old contact is gone.” He was just being cautious, but that was something Oliver couldn’t really afford right now.

“I’ll speak with whoever the new man in charge is.” He pointedly avoided thinking about how Alexi Leonov had met his end. “I still have friends much higher up on the food chain. Roy’s life might depend on our finding him as soon as possible.”

Turning to look at the police, intent on stepping in to keep them from asking Sin too many questions, he didn’t notice the buzzing of his phone right away. His mother was calling. If the three other missed calls among the notifications were anything to go by, she had finally arrived at the hospital.

“Oliver, where are you?” Her voice sounded so very tired. Her son could hear the sounds of a keyboard clicking and nurses laughing in the background.

“Verdant,” he answered her shortly. “Someone in charge had to be here to meet the police.” He didn’t bother explain to her about Roy. After everything that had happened in the last few months – her part in the Undertaking, the mayoral candidacy, and the secret she was making him keep from Thea – he didn’t want to give her anything beyond what she absolutely had to know.

“I thought you would have stayed here with your sister.” The reproach seemed grossly out of place, given how much what he was doing was actually for Thea’s sake. The sedative likely wouldn’t leave her system for a few more hours and that mean that he had that much more time to get Roy back safely.

“The doctors are doing what they can, and I’m needed here.” He paused, trying to soften his tone a bit. They both had enough on their plates, with what had happened to Thea. “I’ll pass by later tonight, all right?”

“I… There’s something else I need to talk to you about. In person, if possible.”

Moving towards the front of the club, Oliver rubbed his forehead. He had left his bike at the mansion, and he needed both Digg and Sara working on finding Roy while he arranged to make contact with the Bratva. “It can’t wait until tonight?”

“Please,” his mother begged. A restrained sort of pain and raw worry bled through the faintly tinny phone signal. “I can meet you at my campaign headquarters in thirty minutes. It’s midway between the club and the hospital so the detectives can have you close by in case they need you for something and I can get back to Thea easily if the doctors call about any changes.”

Would he regret this later? Estranged as they had become, Moira Queen was still his mother.

“I’ll see you in half an hour.”

***

“…Water…” Roy croaked out the second he heard someone else moving around in the room. He didn’t know how long he had been unconscious, but he felt weaker than a child right now.

The footsteps were coming closer and he forced himself to open his eyes. He could make out the blurry figure of a woman walking towards his table. She had what hopefully was a bottle of water in hand.

“You should be ready for another round in a while,” she said, placing a bottle against his lips. She had dark hair and her voice was familiar.

Roy fought desperately to get his eyes open all the way. He thought he knew her. The water was cold and slid down his throat so invitingly, he gulped mouthful after mouthful, trying to drink as much as possible before she pulled it away. He blinked a few times to clear his vision. Just as the room sharpened into view, the bottle was eased away from his mouth. Isabel Rochev, Oliver’s co-CEO, was looking down at him with barely more than cool indifference in her eyes.

“You’re…working with Wilson?” He wasn’t sure if he was asking or stating that. Why would a powerful corporate head be working with a monster like the Arrow’s old nemesis? He didn’t understand what she was talking about, either. What did she mean by another round?

“We’re helping each other get what we want,” Rochev actually replied. “I’ll see about hooking you up to a dextrose IV drip between these sessions. We can’t have you dying before your usefulness runs out, can we?”

Before he could ask her anything else, she turned away, placing the water bottle on a shelf at the far end of the room. He vaguely recalled Felicity talking about the Arrow dealing with someone who stole some sort of high-end technology a few weeks back. He could have sworn it had been something big, not full of tubes. The details were so blurry in his head. Whatever they had been doing to him, it had drained him too much. He could barely curl his fingers. He turned his gaze to the empty tables on his right and noticed that some of the straps on them had been moved or hung low to the floor. It was with a sick feeling in his stomach that he realized that Wilson and whoever else he was working with had likely found a way to administer the Mirakuru directly from his bloodstream into other people. He recalled the Iron Heights bus breakout and dread coiled in his belly. He had a suspicion that a growing number of those inmates were benefiting from the drug in his blood.

“You really are slow, aren’t you? I really have no idea what I saw in you.”

Stiffening on the table, Roy’s eyes strained desperately to see the figure walking from the shadows to stand a few feet away. Thea, dressed in the clothes he had last seen her in, stared down at him with disgust. How was she even here? Had she been kidnapped too, after all?

“I was trying to keep you safe,” he said, voice roughened with confused emotions. “You should get out of here.”

Thea only laughed at him, cocking a hand on her hip as she tended to when she was trying to show that she knew better than he did. “I’d rather stay here and watch you _suffer_. You hurt _me_ , Roy. And now I get to see you die slowly on that table for being the coward that you are.”

Growing rage gave Roy the strength to struggle again in his bindings. “I am not a coward! You’re just a naïve little girl who doesn’t know how to back off and take care of herself! You don’t know when to quit!” Was he yelling now? He couldn’t be; his voice sounded normal, amazingly controlled. His head was starting to spin from the sudden exertions but all he wanted was to force enough pressure against the cuffs so that he could break them and get at Thea Queen’s scrawny neck.

“Looks like Slade was right,” Rochev said. She had come up to stand right next to Thea, looking at him with a morbidly detached sort of curiosity. “Your mind’s breaking down quicker than expected.”

What was she talking about? He went silent, glaring at her and Thea both. His limbs were getting tired, and he needed at least a few minutes before he could try to break the cuffs again. At Rochev’s signal, five gray-clad men filed in through the doors and headed for the tables against the wall. He looked from them to Thea, realizing what was happening. She wasn’t real.

He turned to look at the ceiling and closed his eyes. He was starting to lose his grip on reality, just like Oliver had warned. The longer he was stuck here, the faster it was going to happen. The machine roared to life and he could feel his blood pumping steadily out of him again through the needle in his arm. Fake Thea started whispering in his right ear. _Failure. Coward. So worthless you were easy to abandon._ The hissing went on and on.

Would the Arrow find him before he went completely mad?

***

Nearly all the staff had gone home for the evening at the space Oliver’s mother was renting for her campaign headquarters in Starling City’s central business district. She was conveniently located only a few blocks from Queen Consolidated, and her son was just thankful that she hadn’t decided to use that as an excuse to try and check on him at different points in the day. Following her assistant into the inner office, he tried to get his impatience in check. Thea was just sleeping in the hospital and wouldn’t suffer anything worse than a hangover when she woke up. He was worried about Roy, whose fate he wasn’t certain of at all. He had sent a quick message to his Bratva contacts that he needed a meeting, but he’d have to wait until after this setback to head for their territory.

“Is this about my missing your debate with Alderman Blood the other day?” he asked abruptly as soon as the assistant had left them alone in the room.

He closed the door firmly behind him and faced his mother across her desk. She wasn’t sitting, but standing behind it, leaning against the window. She looked more exhausted than he’d ever seen her before. She’d been delayed getting to the hospital because of a meeting with some of her sponsors, and then later, traffic.

“I would have valued your support there,” his mother said, her tired eyes meeting his without hesitation. “But I know you must be very busy working with the company and everything else that occupies your time.”

If there was a hint of sarcasm there, Oliver was fighting really hard not to notice it. “With Thea in the hospital, someone had to check on her club. It’s in the foundry, which is a company asset, after all.”

Moira Queen didn’t look the least bit impressed. “I need to get back to the hospital to watch over Thea, so I’ll make this quick.” She took a deep breath, keeping her eyes steadily on him. “You were seen at lunch with Mr. Slade Wilson today. A few of our acquaintances among my other sponsors say that you two were discussing his investing in the family company.”

Of all the things that he thought his mother might want to discuss, this was the last thing he would have guessed.

“Maybe,” he managed to get out, trying not to think about the intensity in that one-eyed gaze focused on him earlier. “We didn’t really have enough time to hammer out any details.”

“You need to get him to commit,” his mother said, folding her arms across her chest and looking out the window. “Putting aside whatever hostilities you felt towards him when I introduced you at home is a good first step, but you need to befriend him.”

Oliver felt like he was in some sort of twilight zone. “The company isn’t that close to bankruptcy, Mom. Isabel and I have our differences, but between us, we’re making sure that Queen Consolidated stays solvent – and profitable for the investors.”

“Isabel Rochev _is_ the problem.”

It was yet another angle he hadn’t expected his mother to take. His worries about the Bratva slipped off to one side in his mind as he zeroed in on his mother’s concerns about Isabel. He had been suspicious about his partner’s calmness when he’d met Slade in her office, but his mother had specifically warned him about her when the Vice President of Acquisitions of Stellmoor International had first taken interest in the Queen Consolidated. He never actually saw her willingly spend time with the female executive. Maybe he was about to hear why.

“You have to make sure that he deals with you more than he does with her. If you can gain his trust exclusively, it would be even better. He’s the first new prospective investor the company has seen in a while and he could help you court the rest of the board to your side.”

Two things hit Oliver at once. His mother didn’t know about the threat of injunction hanging over his head and she certainly didn’t have any idea how impossible what she was asking of her son was. The very idea of befriending Slade for the good of the company was beyond comprehension. In any other situation, he would have punched something or found a corner to sit and laugh hysterically. Instead, he looked carefully at the woman who had raised him. This wasn’t about Slade, not really.

“Why does Isabel Rochev have you on edge so much?” he asked, bracing his hands on the table. He tried to catch her eye again, but she was very artfully avoiding his gaze. “Mom, I’m doing what I can to keep the company running, but you already know how I feel about all the secrets. This isn’t the same thing as what you’ve asked me to help you keep from Thea. If I fail the company, it’s going to be at least partly your fault.”

He should have expected how much she would still hedge. “She has the confidence of nearly the entire board. You need all the support that you can get. Make Slade Wilson your ally; you’ll have an edge over her and a way to prove yourself to the other investors.”

She wasn’t going to say anything more helpful. Oliver felt he should have known better. Last time, it had taken Digg posing as the Arrow and hurting him to make her confess what was going to befall Starling City. He shouldn’t have expected her to change even after all that had already happened.

“I’ll take your warnings and advice under consideration,” he told her, turning and tugging open the door. He paused there, glancing back at her. “But I hope for your sake that keeping things from me is worth it. This is the last time I’m letting you give me half-answers.”

He filed their talk away for future reference as he walked through the halls out of the building. For now, he had more pressing matters to deal with. He had to convince the Bratva to help him find Roy.

***

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_All the training, day in and day out with sticks, knives, a bow and arrow – the only reason he was only practicing_ aiming _guns and rifles was because they were trying to conserve ammunition. He’d killed before to defend himself out of necessity. But only a few hours ago, he’d done it in cold blood. He, Oliver Queen, was worse than an animal._

_“Why don’t you tell me what you plan to do when we get off the island?” Shado said, drawing him from his miserable thoughts._

_From what he could hear, she was stepping out of the river. He could hear her rubbing the water off her skin, but he lacked the will or desire to turn and take a quick peek. He focused on her question. More than the thought of a naked woman, it forcibly grounded him._

_“You mean, if whoever gave that guy his maps helps us?” he clarified. They had been talking, when they’d discovered there were new people on the island, of the possibility of bargaining with them. After what he had done, he wasn’t sure that they’d listen._

_Oliver sat on one of the large rocks along the riverbank, trying to stop thinking about what had happened not more than two hours ago, when he had killed that mercenary that had surprised them. Shado had taken him to the river to help him wash his hands free of the blood, but he still felt unclean. Initially, she had offered to keep watch while he bathed, but he had declined. Her eyes had flashed with disapproval, but she had acquiesced to getting clean herself, in the end._

_“Humor me, please.” A fully-dressed Shado stood to his left, smiling encouragingly. She’d been trying to reassure him ever since they’d gotten to the river, but all he could think of was how fervently he wished she and Slade hadn’t taught him to become a fighter._

_“I’d go home.” The words were sure, but he felt hollow inside as he said them. He looked away from Shado as she sat down beside him. “If Mom ever decides to let me out of her sight again, I’d visit you in Hong Kong. Tommy would come just to hit on you, but you can handle him. I could send the company jet to come get you so you can visit Starling, too. A few new clubs have probably opened in the last few months––”_

_“Would you invite Slade, as well?” she interrupted him._

_He couldn’t answer her immediately. He wished that the ASIS agent had taken him and Shado on his scouting trip. Instead Shado was babysitting him here. He was sure Slade, hardened soldier that he was, had gone off alone because he didn’t want to deal with the city boy blubbering over nothing._

_“It’d be up to him,” Oliver finally said. He’d go back home to the United States and Slade would head back to his organization and to his family in Australia. Oliver knew he would certainly like to see Shado again and hear stories about Yao Fe over dinner or a walk through the streets. But what friendship could possibly exist between him and Slade after they finally left the island?_

_“The bonds we form here aren’t ones lightly made,” Shado told him. She cupped his cheek and smiled at him again. It was a fond, comforting look. “These last few months, after my father’s passing, you two have been my family. Slade will not want you to fade out of his life either, I know it.”_

_Oliver and Slade were discreet, but Shado somehow knew what they did when she was away or asleep. She wasn’t the type to tease them, but sometimes there was something like mirth in her eyes when she caught Oliver stumbling out from behind a bush after a hunt or perimeter check._

_Hearing her say that there was hope they could all still stay in contact after this made him feel better. He wasn’t who he had once been, but they understood, they grounded him. He was about to tell her that when Slade came jogging down to them from the forest. Oliver scrambled to his feet. He felt like a kid caught finger-painting on the walls, for some reason._

_“I think I figured where those men were headed,” Slade said abruptly. “It’s a couple of clicks northwest of here.”_

_Business as usual. Oliver tried not to let his exhaustion and disappointment show. He straightened his shirt and bent down for his weapons._

_“Taking a look can wait an hour or so,” Shado responded. “There’s enough time for you and Oliver to wash up. You need some rest too, before we deal with what comes next.”_

_It looked like Slade was going to argue with her until a shift in her gaze caused a sort of understanding to pass between them. The soldier shrugged and unbuckled his tactical vest. “It’s been a long last few hours.”_

_Shado disappeared off into the woods with a nod and a reassuring look at Oliver, then the two men were suddenly alone. Oliver waited a beat before walking back towards the river and stripping off his shirt. He didn’t want Slade to think he was still incapacitated by shock or something._

_“I thought that she got through to you,” the older man’s voice came from just behind him. A heavy hand coaxed him to turn around. Slade had managed to strip down to his pants and boots already and now stood looking at him, something weirdly like guilt and regret at once on his face. “Earlier – it happens to the best of us, kid. Usually in a warzone, but this is hopefully the closest you’ll come to those conditions in your life.”_

_He’d needed to hear those words. He’d needed to know he wasn’t losing himself. In his relief, he was going to say something stupid, he was sure. Instead, he tugged Slade right up against his chest and kissed him hard with every shred of gratefulness he felt._

_As they pawed the rest of their clothing off and crashed into the river, he wondered if he really could just walk away from this when they finally got off the island. What place did ASIS operative Slade Wilson have in the life of billionaire socialite Oliver Queen? He didn’t know, but he desperately needed there to be one._

***

The bodyguards hadn’t been replaced, though they dressed in mechanic uniforms well after regular work hours were over. The man between them was much younger than Alexi Leonov had been; however, the distrustful look in his eyes was just the same. After peremptory greetings in the old coded Russian that Anatoly had taught him, Oliver took a step back, getting a good look at the man who was now in charge of this corner of organized crime in Starling. The men likely guessed he had been the reason that Leonov had been killed. He couldn’t be as brusque as he had been last time.

“We thought that you would not be coming back here after your last conversation with my predecessor,” the gray-eyed faction leader said. “Dmitri Alkaev. I control city operations now…captain.”

Oliver shook his hand, clearly hearing the irony in the use of his title. From the way that Alkaev talked, he seemed Starling-bred, if not raised. His accent was very faint, almost like Oliver’s own. “I don’t suppose I need an introduction, if you know that much about me.”

“I also know – or can guess – that you are here again about something to do with Slade Wilson,” the Bratva leader said, leaning on one of the cars, arms crossed over his chest. He was sure of himself, surer and less tense than Leonov had been. “We’re better informed now than when you first started coming to us for favors that have to do with your old friend.”

Anatoly must have told them. Oliver wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not, but his old companion had figured out enough in the time that they had gotten to know each other to know how important this was. A part of him wished that he had gotten word of the developments in Starling to his friend in Moscow when this mess had started. Leonov’s life might have been spared. Alkaev seemed smart, but it was always better to work with the devil you already knew.

“He kidnapped a new friend of mine,” he said bluntly. “And I suspect that he’s doing some things that will be very, very disruptive for business in the near future if he isn’t stopped.”

“What kind of things?” the Bratva leader asked. He looked outwardly unfazed, but Oliver could tell that he’d said the right thing to keep Alkaev listening.

“You heard about what happened to those buses full of inmates from Iron Heights, right?” Oliver looked at him pointedly.

It seemed for a moment like Alkaev lost interest, then he huffed derisively and shook his head. “Get those men back where they belong and we will call it even. They make business dealings more complicated than convenient.” He gestured for one of his men to hand Oliver an envelope. “I had this compiled when I heard you wanted to meet with me. We kept tabs on your Australian. He lives in the building across the one where Alexi was found murdered.”

At that, Oliver frowned, taking the envelope and tucking it away for later. Amanda Waller hadn’t told him about this when he had gone to her. Then again, he thought bitterly, the Bratva was more forthcoming than she ever was. Anatoly was the one ultimately in charge of them and he counted Oliver a friend. ARGUS was another matter entirely: Waller would use his connection to Slade as a weakness to exploit, if she ever found out exactly what it had been.

Taking his bike to the new base in the basement of the abandoned building, he punched in the code on the keypad hidden behind one of the walls. He’d seen Digg’s car and Sara’s bike parked nearby. Felicity hadn’t left the site all day. All they were missing was Roy, and now he had what they needed in order to find him.

“I still think you’re reading too much into this, Felicity,” Oliver heard Digg saying as he came walking down the stairs. On instinct, he slowed to a stop just before he came into view of the people in the room. Peering around the corner, he could see his two friends standing to one side of the largest of her monitor screens. They were looking at a blown-up photograph of him and Slade walking out of the steakhouse earlier.

“ _I’m_ reading too much into things?” the resident tech genius argued. Even if Oliver could not see her expression, he knew she was likely large-eyed with incredulity. “It wouldn’t have meant anything if it were just a guy being all extra protective and maybe a little overly touchy with his way younger brother after several years of being apart, not like they were enemies at some point in the past and Oliver somehow had something to do with him being one eye short of a pair or anything like that – which really, really does put another level of crazy on this whole thing, but then, I watched the surveillance video.” She pulled up another image, one from when they had been inside the restaurant.

Still hidden in the stairwell, Oliver clenched his fist. The past was long laid to rest on the tomb island of Lian Yu. This was a different time and he was dealing with a different person. So why did it look so natural for him and Slade to lean towards each other over the table like that? Why did seem so instinctual for his hand to slide against Slade’s a fraction of a second before the waiter appeared? He hated himself for how things had come to this. It was all his fault.

“Oliver keeps next to everything about Slade close to his chest,” Digg said, watching the video feed carefully. “We know the guy being back from the dead gets to him. We don’t have the whole picture, but pre-Mirakuru Slade Wilson is the guy who made sure he survived for however long they were together on Lian Yu. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

“This whole manhunt has one really complicated subtext to it,” Felicity argued, rubbing her head. “I’m a hacker and a tech person – not a psychologist – and _knowing_ Oliver and seeing the video feed is really starting to creep me out – which it sadly wouldn’t, from a voyeuristic perspective, if it didn’t involve our really hot vigilante friend and the twisted male version of Commander Franky Cook from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. And…I did not just say that aloud, damn it!”

In the stairwell, a cool hand wrapped around Oliver’s wrist. Sara appeared to his left, already dressed in her Canary uniform and staring up at him with worried eyes.

“They won’t stop trying to figure things out on their own,” she warned him in a whisper. “You were still really angry when you first found out Slade was here. I get it. You told me and you told Felicity and Digg that you were going to kill him. But every time I’ve talked to or seen you since, it’s gotten clearer and clearer that you can’t. Maybe that time on the Amazo, you really never meant––”

“I’ll handle Slade,” he cut her off, too wired to have this conversation. A small voice in the back of his head hissed that he just didn’t want to think about how close to the truth Sara’s guessing actually came. “I’ve gotten the location from the Bratva,” he said loudly, deliberately slowing his steps just a fraction so Felicity had time to hide the video feed she had playing on her monitor screen.

“We’re doing another warehouse raid?” Digg asked, smoothly recovering from the argument he’d been having with Felicity.

“It’s a residential address,” Oliver said to him, laying the envelope on the table as he outlined his plan. “I’ll go in alone. If he has a computer there, I’ll be able to load one of Felicity’s viruses in it so we can figure out where Roy is. Sara will be on standby with her bike to be the scouting party the second Felicity extracts the information. Digg, I want you on sniper duty for this one just in case. With luck, there won’t be anyone waiting to knock you out this time.”

If they all looked at him with eyes saying that this was a bad idea, that was just their opinion. This was the way it was going to happen.

The apartment unit he slid into thirty minutes later was almost directly across the street from the office where Leonov had been murdered. He had to hand it to Slade, planning everything down to that particular detail. The exact room where the looped video of Shado had been playing was likely visible from the line of windows he’d just entered through. At the very least, it would mean Digg would have a clear shot from his vantage point on the office building roof. The location was ideal from both sides – but everything else about it was foreign in relation to the man who supposedly lived here.

_You only knew me on the island._ Slade was right about that, but Oliver wanted to think he understood what sort of man he was. The apartment he crept through slowly, with the many walls and the mazes of rooms, could be used for guerilla hits, but Slade had always favored having his surroundings open, where efficient, clear shots made for quick kills and incapacitation. He’d once said that open spaces made it easier for him to breathe and reminded him of home in Australia. He liked his comforts, slouching on the nets in the back of the fuselage whenever he took one of his rare breaks. The furniture in this apartment, from the intricate lamps to the rich rugs and the antique wood tables and formal couches, reminded Oliver more of his family’s home than a place where his old mentor could rest his head. And yet, Slade had admired the collection of paintings in the private gallery of the house. Similar pieces hung on the walls here. It all felt so very wrong.

“You won’t find what you’re looking for here, kid,” Slade’s voice came from somewhere down a hallway. “I taught you where _not_ to hide things, remember?”

It was a dig about the island, about how they’d lost the microchip because Oliver hadn’t been clever enough in concealing it. Slade had taught him to be better, after that. Slade had always been good at correcting his mistakes the hard way. Suddenly this felt like just another lesson. He ripped the comm link out of his ear and turned it off. This would just be between the two of them.

“If you’ve harmed Roy, I will make you regret it,” he growled, fingers itching to let loose an arrow as a threat. When he reached the room the voice had come from, it took him a moment to process what he was seeing.

They were in a study as ornate as those in the homes of his father’s old associates. And in this formal Old World room, Slade stood in a black t-shirt and loose tactical pants and boots, as rough as he had looked when they had first met. It was more bewildering and painful than the sight of him in a suit and tie in a fine dining restaurant.

Looking at Oliver through his single eye, he spoke in that measured, slow tone he’d been using ever since his arrival in Starling. “The boy is a survivor. He’ll come out of this ordeal even stronger than before.”

It was the shock Oliver needed. One of his arrows flew right past Slade’s left cheek, embedding itself into the wall. “Your men drugged Thea in the process,” he said, striding further into the room.

He shouldn’t be getting too close, stepping within reach of that Mirakuru-strengthened grip, but this was pure instinct. His hood was still in place and his jaw was set as he stared Slade straight in the face. He wanted to threaten him. He wanted to make him do something. He wanted to _fight_ him.

“What’s keeping me from putting an arrow in your other eye in payment?”

Slade slammed him down onto the table face-first. Hot breath ghosted over his right ear as the ex-soldier pressed down on him, rumbling right into the sensitive shell. “Even if I were blind, you’d still be no match for me. I will rip this city apart and destroy every single thing in it that you claim to love. You’ll know, then, how it feels to suffer as you’ve made me suffer all these years.”

Oliver pushed back from the table and slammed his head into Slade’s nose. As the older man stumbled back, clutching at his face, the Arrow swung at him with his bow. It wasn’t enough to really hurt him, but it provided the right opening. He aimed to cuff the mercenary’s throat to temporarily stun him. It was a miscalculation; the Mirakuru had heightened Slade’s reflexes enough that he was able to sidestep Oliver’s advance and force his momentum downwards. The fight was on.

Up, down, a sweep to the side – Oliver aimed at all the points he knew a human body was vulnerable, only to be blocked over and over again. For every punch he landed, Slade managed to throw him off-balance like a toy. He tried to knock the older fighter off his feet with a low kick and wound up rolling away to dodge a strike to his left hip. Right, left, feint, duck, he was forced backwards until he found a table to stand on. On higher ground, he turned and rushed forward to aim a push-kick at the center of that solid chest, but his opponent met him head on and grabbed his right leg, swinging him like a doll into a wall.

“You may have learned new tricks here and there, kid,” Slade said, bloody-faced but unwinded, “but don’t forget who taught you the basics!”

They crashed together again against the doorframe of the room, moving into the hall in a flurry of punches and kicks. Slade was good, better than before. It felt like fighting Malcolm Merlyn all over again, being the underdog in a rabid pit bull fight – only this time, he knew the moves of his opponent almost by heart and it still wasn’t enough. When Slade’s fist missed his shoulder and he flipped backwards into the living room to avoid the blow, wood went spraying from the collision. His bow was knocked out of his hand and wound up in the unlit fireplace, half a room out of reach. Slade picked him up easily and smashed him down on the couch.

As he twisted back to his feet, he glanced at the buildings outside. Digg should be able to see them soon. Trying to lure Slade closer to the windows, he took a few steps back in that direction, only to be grabbed by the collar and bodily lifted off the ground again. He managed to get one leg up over Slade’s shoulder to force him down onto the floor. The vice grip around his neck slipped a little but the sharp ache of landing on his hip knocked the breath out of him for a moment.

Oliver was losing strength and had to blindly reach back for an arrow from his quiver to defend himself. As soon as Slade got in range, he stabbed him with it in the same shoulder he’d had to dig a bullet out of in another life. The mercenary grunted and threw him back onto the floor. Pulling the arrow out and snapping it in his hand, he stood and kicked the younger man in the ribs. Oliver coughed out a little blood and rolled out of the way as fast as his pained body would allow. He was just becoming aware of a sharp pain in his left bicep, where a piece of furniture had grazed him. He staggered back towards the window again, looking for a weapon. When Slade lunged, he grabbed a standing lamp and broke the bulb of it against the super-soldier’s head.

They both crashed against the wall just between two of the windows when the light bulb sparks blinded them. Single eye shut, roaring with pain from the electric shock, Slade pressed his advantage in weight and enhanced strength by pinning the Arrow right against the wood and concrete. Oliver’s head swam as it banged hard against the wall and he fought to see past the haze in his eyes. When the light flares faded and they finally locked gazes, a world of pain and hurt and betrayal and loss rose up like a maelstrom between them.

Slade’s hand locked like a steel clamp around Oliver’s throat and a life that would never be flashed before the vigilante’s eyes. His mother telling Thea the truth and helping her deal with it. Sara and Laurel’s relationship completely healed. No more secrets from Felicity and Digg. Roy whole and cured. Slade standing beside him on a rooftop in Starling, laughing with him over beers after a long night on patrol. Fantasy and reality flickered and blended as his body began to lose oxygen.

“ARGUS is calling you Deathstroke,” he croaked out, reaching out with a shaking left hand to grasp at Slade’s wrist. “You can live up to the name and end this now. Nobody else has to suffer. I’m the one you want dead, so kill me.”

He was resigned to that. Maybe this was the only way he could be absolved and everyone he cared about would be left in peace.

He didn’t expect Slade’s lips suddenly slotting against his own. Rough and demanding, a skilled tongue slid wholly unapologetic between his slack lips. He froze in shock – but as soon as the hand around his neck loosened, a dam broke inside him. Anger. Guilt. Shame. _Desire_. He grabbed Slade by the nape of his neck and directed the deluge into kissing him right back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am officially calling this the chapter of so much irony and laughter. I am TRYING my damnedest to keep this paralleling key components of Season 2, but the end result is making this one big laugh-riot for me, despite everything going on.
> 
> Thoughts, guys, thoughts! I love hearing your theories and ideas...and responses to my questions like the ones below!  
> \- What do you think about Roy's survival chances? And his possible descent into madness?  
> \- Hands in the air: Who thinks Moira is the worst excuse for an accidental matchmaking parent on the planet right now? (At least Thrandruil KNEW, at the end of the last Hobbit film, that Legolas needed to mend his broken heart when he sent him to look for Aragorn!)  
> \- How much of a slash shipper would Felicity be if she knew how RIGHT her guessing was about that lunch "date"? (And did you guys get the whole Franky Cook yammering?)  
> \- How many of you expected that Mr. and Mrs. Smith reenactment in the apartment? I actually WANTED to add in bazookas and machine guns, but it didn't seem fitting.  
> \- On that same vein, what DO you all think of Slade's behavior? What he surrounds himself with? The difference between past and present him?
> 
> P.S. Don't bother checking Season 3 for Dmitri Alkaev. I pulled him out of a magician's hat because I needed a Bratva head. xp


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have either finally found my pace, or you guys are really, really lucky I am churning out longer chapters suddenly. XD
> 
> The cast of ARROW has been pretty well-regulated over the seasons, I believe, but there are definitely more than a handful of regular characters to keep track of at any given time. I'm not calling this a filler chapter, but I'm definitely cracking the character can open just that little bit wider again this time.
> 
> Hope everyone had a great Halloween last weekend! Enjoy this latest chapter~! :)

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_“So, again, aren’t you glad I got attached to you after all?” Oliver panted, breathing hard between chuckles as he stretched out on the ground._

_He was still seeing spots in front of his eyes and he felt so boneless he could fall asleep right there on the rocks. And while he wasn’t sure whether Shado or Slade was right about what the island had to do with what he was becoming, for this one brief moment, he was something close to happy._

_“You’re still an idiot,” Slade said, sitting up from between his legs and slapping his thigh. “Tuck yourself in. We’ve got a little more walking to do if we want to reach the top before noon.” His lips were red and decidedly swollen. It didn’t stop him from looking quietly smug and satisfied with himself, though._

_Oliver_ was _happy. Saving his mentor from falling off the side of a mountain and getting a blowjob as a ‘thank you’ tended to do that to him nowadays._

_“Sure you don’t want me to return the favor first?” Oliver offered, reaching for Slade’s belt. A part of him was still in shock about the murder he had committed only hours ago, but it wasn’t crippling him inside anymore. If he could joke and get off on adrenalin, it was enough progress for him. He didn’t want to think too much deeper than that._

_“One of us has to keep a clear head.” Slade swatted his hand away as he got to his feet, but ended the action by ruffling the younger man’s blond mop. It was something new and bordering on affectionate, coming from him._

_“Yeah? Sure you’re not just afraid you’re getting too old to get it up more than once a day?” Zipping his pants carefully, Oliver rolled to his feet. He retrieved his gun and backpack, then swept a hand through his hair haphazardly. “I’m still not saying sorry for worrying about leaving Shado alone at the plane with – How did you put it, a dead Japanese soldier?”_

_“Shado can take care of herself.” Slade went up to a dry bush and cut himself a walking stick. He paused after a few steps, looking back at Oliver with a smirk. “And if you quit mouthing off, I’ll spend tonight showing you what tricks you can learn with a few years’ maturity.”_

_Oliver felt something warm bubble up in his gut. He’d drunkenly groped equally drunk male schoolmates at frat parties back in college, but whatever he was doing with Slade was something else. It was weird he wasn’t more freaked out, but maybe that was because the soldier never made a big deal about it. Maybe after they determined what the mercenary was looking for and if that meant they had a way out of here, they could finally talk. Maybe he’d have a reason to burn through his frequent flier miles when he got back to Starling. He’d never actually been to Australia before._

_“I’m telling you to keep your head on straight for your own good,” Slade was apparently still talking, unaware of Oliver’s musings. He was a few feet ahead, testing the ground with his stick as they climbed. “Being and keeping good company’s fine, but the second you get too involved, you might as well be dead.”_

_Oliver stared at the operative’s back, trying to parse this latest installment of soldierly commandments. How closely did Slade follow those, himself? “Is that how you were able to kill Wintergreen just like that?” he asked after a beat, choosing his words carefully for once._

_“Anyone can turn on you, kid,” Slade said, stopping at the peak. “The sensible thing to do is to keep your heart from becoming your greatest…liability…”_

_Before the hurt could set in, Oliver caught sight of what had made his companion trail off so suddenly. They’d climbed to the highest vantage point on the island, where they could see the sea stretching out into the foggy horizon. Today, a dark freighter was anchored just off shore, a smaller boat tied beside it. Not a moment after the image had sunk into Oliver’s mind, the firing started. It didn’t take much longer to realize what the missiles were targeting._

_“Kid! Get back here! KID!!!”_

_Slade was yelling at him but he didn’t stop. They’d left Shado alone at the plane wreck – which the freighter was firing at. When the mercenary hadn’t returned, his shipmates must have used some sort of tracking device to figure out where he was. The last time a missile had exploded on Lian Yu, Oliver had seen Fyers’ entire camp go up in flames. The fuselage was a much smaller target._

_His lungs burned as he jumped down the last few feet of the mountain trail and hit the meadow running. A missile exploded thirty meters to his right and he just barely flung himself out of the blast range._

_“Have you gone completely insane?” Slade rasped, pulling him further away and yanking him back in the direction of the mountainside. “We need to find cover until the firing stops!”_

_“You may be against attachments, but I’m not! Shado could be caught in the middle of the bombardment!” Oliver shoved Slade away and started back for the grass. The fuselage was about fifty meters beyond the copse of trees on the other side of the field. He couldn’t leave their friend in danger._

_Two more missiles exploded in succession in the clearing. He thought he heard Slade scream out his name. He couldn’t tell for sure, ears ringing as he was flung several feet in the air by the combined blasts. He couldn’t see clearly. He couldn’t hear anything but his own heartbeat. Getting up was impossible; he only made it to his elbows in time to hallucinate Slade collapsing a few feet away from him, screaming and clutching at his burning flesh._

_Slade. Not Slade. He tried to stand up to get to him. Slade was tough. He could survive anything. This wasn’t the first missile explosion they’d been stuck in. He had to get to Slade._

_But he lost consciousness before he could do anything._

***

If this was shock, a long-buried part of him wanted to stay in that state for as long as possible before reality set in again. Slade’s lips were exactly as he remembered them: harder and thinner than his own, possessive and hungry and so very certain. Oliver knew how to kiss, but Slade had always brought a different vitality to it. ‘Forbidden’ was the first word that came to mind. But that was just the base note. He’d kissed and been kissed with desperation, traded soft lip grazes in the night, and adrenalin unleashed an entirely different animal from the dark depths inside him.

His hood slid off his head and his eyes fluttered shut briefly as Slade peeled off his mask. His hands were moving of their own volition, one still fisting in the other man’s hair, the other one wrapped tight around his waist. He was breathing hard through his nose, lips parting wider as his tongue fought Slade’s in a strange parody of the beating they’d given each other only moments before. He tried to push away from the wall and felt an obliging hand guide him by his right hip.

It triggered a spike of pain from his hard landing on the floor earlier, and he groaned, finally turning his head to the side, shoving back the living parody of his past. This was wrong, so very wrong on so many levels.

“You should have let go,” he whispered hoarsely, echoing his own words from their conversation in the car earlier. “You’re alive, and that has to mean something. You could have gone back to ASIS. You could have gone home. You could have had a fresh start.”

He was willfully trying to avoid outright mentioning the Mirakuru. His neck still throbbed from today’s latest reminder of how the drug had changed what was familiar into something threatening and dangerous.

“As you have been doing?” Slade said, taking hold of his chin and forcing him to look right in his eye again. “After what happened on that island, I could no more go back to being a drone for ASIS than you could return to the life of a carefree socialite.”

Trying to pry off the fingers holding his head in place, the captive vigilante glared. “Starling City needs protection from the criminals and madmen who seek to destroy it. Including you.”

“You think I’m mad?” Once, Slade would have snorted and laughed, but this version of him said the word like an echo from a place far, far away. “I’ve never seen things more clearly. I have a promise to keep – and your lessons are not over yet.”

Suddenly, Oliver found himself thrown to the floor. Slade spun around and caught a baton just inches away from his head. The Canary was standing in the doorway of the room, her other stick at the ready.

“I wondered if you would show up,” the ex-operative intoned.

“Let Oliver go, Slade.” Stepping into the room, Sara moved with caution. She eyed her friend on the ground, trying to judge how much of a distraction he needed to be able to put some distance between himself and their enemy.

“I expected him. You, on the other hand, are unwelcome.” One moment, the man codenamed Deathstroke was calm and still. The next, he was lunging at Sara with the baton he had caught.

For all the Canary’s training under the League, she was driven back by the sheer violence of Slade’s assault. Her baton broke on contact with the one Slade held and she was forced to block his fist with both arms. Oliver wobbled to one knee, then started creeping along the back of the broken couch to reach the fireplace. Just as Sara ducked a blow that could have shattered her hip, Oliver grabbed his bow and fired one arrow into Slade’s knee. He fired another through his right hand.

“We’re leaving,” he said, getting to his feet just as the mercenary crashed to the ground. “We’ll find out where you’re keeping Roy and get him back. This is going to end – one way or the other.”

It hurt like a physical ache to say that, but he had to put the good of the city first. He had another arrow nocked and ready to fly just in case. Sara rushed over to his side, still prepared to turn around for a fight. He forced himself to keep his eyes on Slade’s shoulder and not on his face; he didn’t want to see his expression.

“You _will_ suffer, Oliver,” swore the man who had once taught him how to survive, “and only then can we move forward.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Replacing his hood on his head, the Arrow broke through the glass with a grappling attachment and grabbed the Canary by the waist. He spied his mask lying on the floor, but did not reach for it. It seemed fitting to leave it there. He swung them across the street to safety, dropping into the darkness of an alleyway before he let go. His left arm burned and the open wound stretched wider from the effort. His knees buckled and he staggered forward, pressing against the alley wall to steady himself.

“We need to get you back to the base to patch up,” Sara said, slinging his arm around her shoulders to support him.

“What happened to John?” Oliver asked, insistently hobbling and dragging her along deeper into the alleyway. They needed to find their friend and get to his car. “Was he ambushed on the roof?”

“You’d know if you kept your comm on!” Glaring up at him, Sara pointedly tapped the device in her ear. “Meet us by the car,” she told Digg over the unit. “I’ve got Mr. Solo Ops safe and sound. We need to leave before the police get here.”

They had a few moments to themselves, walking in the shadows as quickly as Oliver’s battered body would allow. Sara pointedly refused to look at him, watchful eyes on the path and their surroundings.

“How much did you see?” he finally asked her.

“Enough to know Slade is serious about destroying the city,” Sara said shortly. She rested a hand on his shoulder, trying to get him to look at her. “Digg didn’t catch what happened after you hit him with that lamp – but I did.”

Oliver stopped walking completely. It was his turn to avoid her gaze.

“Do you plan to share that with him and with Felicity?”

He didn’t like how hollow he sounded. Part of him wanted her to talk, to spare him from having to, but the very idea made something in his gut recoil. She and Digg and Felicity and Roy helped him protect Starling City – but the more personal battle between Slade and himself, none of them could be involved in.

Sara wasn’t speaking. Given what she had seen and what she thought she knew and understood, it was hard to tell what her choice would be. They continued on in silence, picking their way through the detritus in the darkness. Their resources were better put to use figuring out the riddle in Slade’s last words.

Just as they turned at the corner where Digg waited for them with the car, the Canary spoke: “Only if you leave me no choice.”

***

Oliver had not returned to the hospital. It was close to midnight and Moira was more frustrated than ever with her son. As she sat at Thea’s bedside, alternately stroking her daughter’s hair or holding her hand, she wondered exactly when everything had started to go wrong.

“Will you be wanting a blanket or anything, Mrs. Queen?” a passing nurse asked, peeking into the semi-dark room. Her name was Mandy or Mary, something that sounded like that. “Shift change is happening in a while and I won’t be back till around two PM tomorrow.”

Moira had a meeting with her campaign team at eight o’clock the next morning, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave her daughter alone in the hospital tonight. She looked up at the nurse and smiled at her as kindly as possible.

“No, I’m fine here, really,” she said. “I have everything I need. If you could just tell the next nurse that I’m staying here overnight, that will be enough.”

“Do try and get some rest, Mrs. Queen,” Nurse Macy – as Moira finally recalled – smiled a small encouraging smile and waved goodbye for the night.

Spread out on the small cot in a corner of the room – the hospital staff had been so very helpful and quite a few had promised her their votes – were some of the files and charts she had brought with her from the office. At the very least, she would be prepared for whatever would come up at the next debate. When the nurse left, closing the door quietly behind her, Moira went to the cot and picked up one of the newest reports. Some people questioned her fitness for public office since one of her children had been a no-show at the mayoral debates earlier in the week. It made matters worse that it was the child who was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

Just as she started reading, the hair on the back of her nape stood on end. She swallowed hard and set down the report on the table by Thea’s bed. How long would it take her to scream before something happened? Would anyone come to help her in time? Slowly, determined to deal with whatever this was in the best way she could, she turned around.

Malcolm Merlyn stood in the shadows just by the still-closed door.

“You have no right to be here,” Moira proclaimed, stepping back towards the bed. She wouldn’t let this madman get his hands on Thea if it was the last thing she did while she was still alive. She didn’t question how he had gotten into the hospital or how he was going to walk out. She knew how dangerous he was, more than ever now that he was running from the League.

“I would never hurt our daughter,” Malcolm said, peeling away from the wall and striding closer to the bed, still keeping to the shadows. “I came here the second I got word that she had been brought in. Before you ask, Moira, I had _nothing_ to do with this. I wasn’t behind this attack.”

“This one, perhaps.” Years with Robert had taught Moira how to pick and choose what to focus on in a fight, and right now, she knew exactly what was important. “That doesn’t reassure me as much as you thought it would. How can I be sure you won’t be behind any others in some twisted attempt to gain her trust?”

“All I want is to get to know her,” Malcolm insisted. “She is all I have left and, as her father, I have every right to. How could hurting her ever help me accomplish that?”

It was frightening and sickening at the same time to realize that he simply wasn’t going to give up. Where were the men from the League of Assassins who would drive him from Starling? Had Ra’s al Ghul sent anyone at all? Moira steeled herself, stepping purposefully to the foot of the bed. “As long as I draw breath, you’ll never have anything to do with Thea. Ever. She will never be drawn into your twisted world.”

“Then you had better be sure you live a good, long life. If anything, what happened today is only going to get you more sympathy votes in the polls, isn’t it?” Malcolm’s eyes flickered to the bed, and then he opened the door and slipped out into the hall.

As soon as he was gone, Moira sagged into a chair. She rested her face in her open palms and closed her eyes, praying that things would not become any worse than they already had. She didn’t notice the desperate twisting of her daughter’s hands in the bedsheets.

***

Sitting down in his office chair was the most painful and difficult thing that Oliver had to force himself to do that morning. Part of him had wanted to sleep in or take some more painkillers, but with Isabel’s threats still fresh from the day before, he had to devote some time to his day job or he would be putting everything else just that much more at risk. Sinking back against the stiff backrest, he stared wearily at the city skyline outside. Starling looked so peaceful that yesterday’s confrontation might as well have been a very bad dream. Except, he had bruised ribs and hips and a healing cut in his left arm to prove otherwise. His neck, furthermore, looked like it had been caught in a steel trap – if steel traps left finger-shaped marks behind.

He could still feel everything from last night: too-rough hands against his throat and chin, a pair of familiar lips hot and insistent against his own, the hard press of a male body in the beginnings of an intimacy he had not allowed himself to feel in years. He leaned forward to rest an elbow on his desk and started rubbing at his temples. Allowing himself to think of the night he’d slept with Laurel just before the Undertaking – it just didn’t feel the same. And it had nothing to do with being gay or straight or bisexual.

The bonds forged on the island were not ones made lightly, Shado had once said. She was gone now, but it seemed her words still held true. He missed her quiet company badly, and wished she could be here to help him determine what he needed to do next.

“Lunch didn’t go too well yesterday, I take it?” Isabel said from the doorway. “Or is there another reason you’re here well before noon?” She let herself in without waiting for an invitation.

A glance at the outer office showed that Felicity wasn’t back from her errand with Digg yet. She’d left her tablet with all the information downloaded from the police department servers at the base and she’d wanted to go over some of it with Oliver.

“Since you were chatting with Mr. Wilson before then, shouldn’t you ask him yourself?” he said as neutrally as possible. He stayed seated at his desk with no intention of rising to greet her.

Isabel went to lean against the table instead of taking one of the guest chairs, looking right down at him with her usual faintly all-knowing smirk. A power-play it was. “I believe both of you implied that you have history. And he _is_ a sponsor for your mother’s campaign, isn’t he?”

Oliver cursed not having Felicity run a program to dig into Isabel Rochev’s past. With Thea’s hospitalization and the fruitless confrontation with Slade, his mother’s worries about the woman her son worked with had remained pushed to the side.

“Mr. Wilson,” he stressed the formal title, “made noises about investing. We didn’t get into specifics, though. We didn’t even touch on what he’s doing for my mother.” He was careful not to move his head too much today; the bruising was a challenge to hide even with a collared shirt and a tie. “I think you gave him more company details than you should have given a potential investor, but that was your call, not mine.”

“Whatever Mr. Wilson knows about Queen Consolidated, I’m afraid he discovered on his own.” Isabel leaned down a little closer, and there was something just a little bit more twisted in the set of her lips. “In our short acquaintance, I’ve come to realize he can be very thorough when he wants something.”

Was there a threat in that statement? Oliver, forced himself to stand, looking into her eyes. They were almost as dark as Slade’s, a thought that brought him no pleasant feelings. “The ball’s in his court now. I’ll be sure to let you know if there are any developments.”

That seemed enough to satisfy his partner. She straightened and turned to leave. “Thank you so much for cooperating. I may not have to go ahead and take those papers to court after all.” She paused with a hand on the glass door. “By the way, have your assistant cover up that bruise on your neck. We don’t need the employees speculating about your extracurricular activities any more than they already do.”

Hand going up to adjust his shirt collar, Oliver cursed internally. He watched Isabel walk away towards her office just as Felicity came out of one of the elevators.

“You’ll want to hear this,” she said abruptly as soon as she got into the office, gesturing to the two people behind her. “Oliver, these are Cisco Ramon and Dr. Caitlin Snow of STAR Labs, where Barry was transferred for more advanced monitoring of his coma.”

“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Queen,” Dr. Snow, a fretful-looking woman around his age, said as she shook his hand.

“Please, sit. Any friend of Felicity and Barry is more than welcome. Make yourselves comfortable.” Oliver gestured at the couch by the window, wondering what exactly was happening here. Felicity had that excitable gleam in her eyes that meant that something was up and she just couldn’t say it out loud because they were in public.

Dr. Snow shook her head and started to beg off. “That’s kind of you, but we really can’t stay long––”

“Got any soda?” Cisco asked, grinning casually and talking over her. When his partner nudged him, he just made a face. “What? It’s not like we think he’s the bad guy here or anything!”

This was just getting stranger and stranger. Oliver did half-turn to the mini bar before he realized this was definitely not just a social call. “I’m sorry, but what exactly is this about?”

“We were sent here a few days ago to do inventory in the STAR Labs warehouse since our lease is being cancelled,” Dr. Snow said, gingerly sitting on the edge of the couch. Her companion went to stand just beside her while Felicity took up position by Oliver’s side. “We were doing some final cross-checking and we found some discrepancies between the logs and the actual inventory. Something’s been stolen recently and, based on what Cisco saw on the security feeds, we called Felicity for advice. She suggested speaking with you in person.”

“What was taken?” he asked bluntly. He didn’t have a clue about what was missing, but he already suspected that he knew the thief.

It took a moment before he realized that neither Cisco nor Dr. Snow were saying anything. He stared right back at them, picking up on their hesitance.

Cisco was the first to cave. “Well, it’s a––”

“Secret!” Dr. Snow cut him off. She bit her bottom lip nervously, as though she had only just realized she had sniped at the CEO of the company they really needed the cooperation of.

At Oliver’s side, Felicity huffed. “The kind you and Cisco have to keep, you said. But that was from _me_. You can tell my boss here –” she clapped Oliver on the shoulder once then stepped back and frowned, “– Wow, it feels _so_ weird calling you that in front of people! But you can _definitely_ tell Oliver since it was his company’s truck involved.”

Stepping in front of the reluctant Dr. Snow, Cisco showed him a photo on his phone. “I did a little digital enhancing on the grainy footage of one of the security cameras along the perimeter of the warehouse facility and caught this snippet from three nights ago.”

The phone’s LCD was small, but the logo of Queen Consolidated was clear enough on the side of the large container van in the photo. And though zooming in could confirm it, Oliver didn’t need that to know the orange dot that he was looking at was part of the mask of one particular wily mercenary.

“I’ll have a security team look into this,” he said, walking to the windows. Pieces in the puzzle were all coming together in his mind. “If you can email a copy of this to Felicity, that’d be great. Felicity, please see Cisco and Dr. Snow – Caitlin, if I may – out so I can get started on investigating how one of our trucks came to be at the STAR Labs facility.”

He could have made small talk and been more polite, but time was of the essence here. Roy had been missing for nearly 24 hours and Slade had all but revealed that whatever chaos he was going to cause was not his real end game. A few minutes after Felicity had escorted her friends out, he leaned his head on the glass. His body still hurt from the night before, but if they could get a lead on Roy soon, he’d simply ignore the pain and focus on the search. One of his hands went to his neck. The bruises were a pointed reminder that he could not let past feelings get in the way.

Thea was still in the hospital. Roy was still missing. The inmates were still on the loose. The city was still in danger. He had to repeat those thoughts to himself over and over. They would ground him. They were important.

Thirty minutes later, he and Felicity were back at their base, huddled with Diggle and Sara around one of the monitors. Their resident computer genius had hacked her way into STAR Labs’ computer systems and found out exactly what Cisco and Caitlin had reported stolen. After she read out the specs and explained the gist of what a bio-transfuser was and did, Oliver felt sick to his stomach. He could feel Sara’s eyes burning into his back and steeled himself to act normal.

“If you can’t trace energy spikes from the last 18 hours, monitor the city for new ones as they appear,” he told Felicity. “Slade’s using Roy as a proxy so he won’t have to be the one strapped to the machine. We have to know if he’s started using it already.”

“And if he has?” Digg asked. His lips pressed into a thin line just as Oliver looked his way. “How sure are you that Roy’s still even alive? There were dozens of prisoners on those buses and only one him. The extractions, if they’ve already taken place, have to have taken their toll.”

“We have to believe he is,” Oliver snapped. He paused, then shared something from the night before. “…Slade said he would keep Roy alive.”

“You think he’s telling the truth, Ollie?” Sara asked, pointedly grabbing at his arm exactly where the healing stitches were as a reminder. “After the way he attacked you yesterday?”

Hissing from the pain, he just glared. “I need to find Roy.”

“You going to the office today was one thing, but you can’t possibly be ready to go back out on the streets,” Felicity chimed in from her computer terminal. “Those bruises are nasty. You just barely avoided a rib fracture!”

Diggle pocketed his car keys and went to the weapons rack along one of the walls. “You’re not going anywhere alone. If there’s a chance Roy’s still breathing and we’re going after him, the price isn’t going to be your life. I didn’t see everything that happened in that apartment, but I don’t trust Deathstroke one bit.”

Oliver’s phone started to ring. Before he pulled it out of his pocket, he shot his friends a bitter, bitter smile. “Slade Wilson is a madman. But if there’s one thing that a madman can be counted on to do, it’s to keep his promises. No matter what.”

***

Thea sank back wearily against the pillow. She had a cup of water in hand and one of the nurses had gone to get her a tray of food. Hospital food, but it was better than nothing. Thankfully, the doctor had agreed to contact Oliver instead of their mother. She hoped he would get her real food. She would kill for a burger.

She could almost smell one: greasy meat and melted cheese with the faint acid of pickles mixed in and still-warm fries and onion rings on the side. She supposed that being unconscious for nearly a whole day would do that to a person.

“Look who’s finally awake!”

In the doorway, her brother was grinning, looking at her with obvious relief in his eyes. He dangled a large bag from Big Belly Burger in one hand as he walked into the room.

“Well, you’re faster than the hospital cafeteria, at any rate,” she said, her own brand of relief crossing her face as she held out her hands for the bag of food. Oliver’s arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace instead. She returned the hug as much as she awkwardly could, with the short dextrose tube attached to her arm.

“Speedy, don’t scare us like that again,” he said, finally putting down the take-out and sitting by her bed.

“There was a time when you and Mom both used to say I spent so much time partying that I wasn’t getting enough sleep.” Thea looked her brother in the eye, smiling at him tiredly. “I guess I just made up for some of those hours, didn’t I?” she said, finally opening the bag and reaching for one of the burgers.

“Thea… do you recall what happened before you got knocked unconscious?” Oliver asked. He shifted nervously in his seat, but he didn’t look away from her.

“Everything’s so fuzzy,” she admitted, putting the burger down and going for the fries. “I remember…I was talking to Roy in Verdant. He walked out and I could hear noise in the alley and… It makes no sense.”

It was so confusing, trying to get the words out and describe what she had seen to her brother. Three muggers and her ex in the alley, fighting. She recalled shooting, but not the sound of gunshots. Roy was falling to the ground, hit by something that made him collapse. She recalled yelling and running out with the baseball bat from behind the bar counter. She’d gone from annoyed to angry to worried, all in a matter of minutes from the time that Roy turned his back on her and walked out the back door of the club.

“…I thought I was seeing things…” she admitted. “I know whatever Roy was knocked out with, I was hit with it, too – but I _must_ have been shot first. I started hallucinating… I thought I saw Roy lift one of the men above his head – a full grown man maybe almost double his weight! What happened to him, Ollie? Where is he?”

She didn’t realize she was squeezing her burger in one hand. Oliver was holding her wrist to calm her down. It wasn’t really working. The more she thought and talked, the more worked up she got.

“I can stall the police for a while longer,” her brother said, taking the food out of her hand. “You need some rest and time to finish eating. Get your strength back.”

“What happened, Ollie?” Thea demanded. Something was really wrong now and she knew when her brother was hedging.

One moment passed when she thought that he would lie to her again. He had that look in his eyes that showed that he wanted to.

He told her the truth instead. “Roy’s been missing since yesterday. We – the police, Sara, Sin, and I – think he was kidnapped.”

Thea paled, speechless. She couldn’t believe what Oliver had said. Nothing made sense to her. At some points in the last few hours, she’d almost regained consciousness but her body had still been unable to fight off whatever drug had been injected into her body. She thought she’d heard her mother talking to Malcolm Merlyn. She thought that she’d heard them admitting that she was the daughter of two murderers instead of just one. With Roy missing and the weird hallucination she’d seen when it happened, how could she tell Oliver this?

***

“Hey, catch!”

Sara turned in time to grab a white paper bag out of the air, laughing. Sin had been walking with her down one of the side streets near the small park just outside the Glades and had fallen back a bit for something. The reason turned out to be a candied apple, sliced in four parts.

“You’re sharing this with me, right?” she asked the young girl as they continued walking in the direction of Verdant. With Thea awake but still in the hospital, Sara was playing temporary person-in-charge at the club.

“Least I can do after you bought me dinner,” Sin replied, grinning cheekily. “…My dad – my real dad – used to bring these home for me when I was younger, before – you know...”

The familiar sense of guilt pinched at Sara’s chest. She had never asked Sin what her father’s name had been. It helped not to know. At least this way, she would only ever remember him as the nameless pilot she’d tried to save on Lian Yu five years ago. Finding Sin, taking care of her in whatever way she could, it was the least she could do to properly honor her promise to a dying man. She pulled out one of the apple slices and handed it to her friend, then took one for herself. “To fond memories – and to family.”

Sin looked up at her for a moment, then gave her a one-armed hug. The girl was seventeen, but years in the Glades hadn’t made her repressed. She wasn’t Laurel, but she was like another sister to Sara, one that she would cherish and protect just as fiercely. The promise she’d made was only extra incentive.

“Thanks for the distraction,” Sin murmured a few minutes later, as they walked deeper into the Glades towards the foundry. “We’ll be allowed to see Thea tomorrow, but there’s still no word on Roy.” She had her fists clenched, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of her jeans. It was obvious to Sara, with years of training in reading people and intimate knowledge of Sin’s expressions, that she was trying to confide how worried she was without explaining exactly why she felt that way. “Whatever happened to him – the police got zilch. He needs to be found soon or there’s no telling what will happen.”

“You’re worried about the drug that makes him strong,” Sara said, bringing it out into the open. From the wide-eyed stare Sin gave her, she knew she had caught her off-guard. With one too many important secrets around her, this was one she didn’t want to keep anymore. She knew Roy had demonstrated to Sin the strength that the Mirakuru had given him, and now she was letting the girl know that, as the Canary, she knew about it as well.

“Is the Arrow helping look for him too?” Sharp as ever, Sin made the connection and searched Sara’s face for answers. They’d stopped a few blocks away from Verdant, just long enough to zip up their jackets and finish the candied apple.

It wouldn’t be much, but Sara was starting to think that they had to bring Sin into the team in some capacity. They could use her eyes on the streets to be the informant Roy had long moved past being. “We’ve got a good lead now. Roy will be back on the streets and bussing tables at Verdant before you know it.” She squeezed Sin’s shoulder in hopes of reassuring her.

As they started walking again, she felt a familiar nagging in her gut. She shifted Sin closer to the side of the buildings, looking back in time to see a black van driving up along the street towards them. The black baklava the driver was wearing was enough to tell her trouble had found them.

“Run!” she hissed, pushing Sin forward and taking off at a sprint down the street.

The van was chasing after them as they ducked into the nearest alleyway. The spaces between buildings here were so narrow that the vehicle would never get through. Sara dragged Sin into an abandoned warehouse, sliding to hide with her behind one of the large container crates. She could hear footstep and peered around the side of the tin container to see three men in nondescript black clothing entering the warehouse. Each one of them had a gun in hand.

“What do they want?” Sin whispered, pressed to the container.

She was just a kid and Sara would do whatever it took to protect her. The batons were at the base, but she had one of her sonic devices in her pocket. She just had to lure the men closer. Looking around, she found no chains dangling from the ceiling beams. A forklift was parked a few meters from the stacked containers. Several tire tracks ran crisscross across the floor, but it looked like they were all out on deliveries. The warehouse had too much open space, something the Canary didn’t like. But she could work with it.

“Stay right here,” she told the teen girl, handing her phone over. “Call Felicity. You know her, right? Tell her where we are and what’s going on. She’ll alert the Arrow.”

As soon as Sin nodded that she understood, Sara leaped into action, sneaking over to the forklift and climbing up like a cat. Standing on top of it, she whistled as loudly as she could.

“Looking for some fun, boys?” she called out.

Predictably, they fired at her. As she somersaulted off the forklift, she noticed that the men weren’t using bullets, but tranquilizer darts. If she were to guess, they were the same kind that had been used on Thea.

Twenty meters away. The men had no distinct attack pattern. They didn’t know how to function as a team. Fifteen meters. As she dodged the firing, she noticed that they had a similar look about them. They were definitely some of the inmates Slade had freed from the Iron Heights buses. Twelve meters. Two of them rushed at her while the third continued to shoot. With the distance closing, it was enough. Sara dove behind the nearest metal container and threw her sonic device in their direction.

The shriek frequency on this version had a shorter range than the first one, but it made up for that in damage capacity. The glass windows of the forklift shattered in a spray of glass and the three men went crashing down, clutching at their ears. Sara rolled to her feet and started back towards where she had left Sin.

“Watch out!!!” the teen screamed suddenly, giving her location away. Her eyes were wide with terror.

Sara didn’t expect the wooden crate that went slamming into her shoulder. Pain lanced up her body as she fell to the floor. Her left elbow was all that saved her from banging her head on the concrete. A fourth goon was stalking towards her, heaving another crate over his shoulder. Mirakuru, the man had to have the Mirakuru in his blood to be able to do that. Somehow, Felicity hadn’t been able to trace the energy spikes after all.

The thug got to her before she could stand. He pinned her to the floor with one of his knees on the back of her thighs. A metal-strong grip locked her hands in place behind her back. From experience, Sara knew she wouldn’t be able to move. It was one thing to fight trained warriors with skills greater than her own. She could find their weaknesses and turn those against them. What made the Mirakuru so dangerous was that it created human death traps. She’d only regain a chance at escape once he let her up off the floor.

“Sin, get out of here!” she yelled, twisting just enough to get the words out. She couldn’t see the girl anymore, but she hoped that she’d managed to bolt away. The shrieks from the sonic device were dying down and she could hear the steady sound of deliberately heavy footsteps approaching from behind her.

Two booted feet came to stop in front of her and she looked up at a black-and-orange helmet. She didn’t need to guess whose face it concealed.

In the voice of a man possessed, Deathstroke rasped: “You didn’t think that the Arrow was the only one I had unfinished business with, did you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, right on into question time, hm?  
> \- How many of you hate that there was no sex after that smack-down in Slade's apartment?  
> \- Was it disappointing NOT to see the actual blowjob in the past? And aren't these two SUCH the adrenalin junkies, eh?  
> \- So, Sara's being kidnapped. Any ideas what is going on in Slade's mad, mad mind?
> 
> Hoping to get you guys a chapter before Thanksgiving rolls around. I have my GRE scheduled this month and I have been informed I am on baking duty all of the Thanksgiving week, so keep your fingers crossed!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been an AGE since I was able to post, so let's get right into it, shall we? This was TECHNICALLY supposed to be one VERY long chapter, but I decided to cut it in two, and give you what actually amounts to... an interlude.

“How’s Thea doing?”

John had been keeping a close watch for Oliver’s return from his spot by Felicity’s workstation. He’d volunteered to monitor the city map for energy spikes while their resident hacker went out to stretch her legs. It was just luck that he was the only one there when Oliver returned to the base. A few things had been on his mind recently, and he knew that his friend was easier to coax into giving explanations if he didn’t feel the pressure of a waiting crowd.

“She’s going home tomorrow afternoon,” Oliver said, a relieved smile on his face. Bounding down the last few steps, he headed straight for the computer screens. The smile faded into a frown. “I had to tell her what happened to Roy. I didn’t want her to have to find out from a detective. Thankfully, I didn’t have to leave her alone with one. Our mom arrived just before I needed to head out.”

“Felicity and I would have called you if we’d caught an energy spike,” John reminded his friend gently. “You should be with them.”

Despite his own questions and misgivings, it was in his bones to put family first. The thought had only grown more certain now that he and Lyla were together again. It was unfortunate that in Oliver’s case, caring for his family seemed to mean staying away. He knew part of that reason. Thea had been collateral damage in Roy’s kidnap, which was part of some grand scheme she was barely even a part of. Moira was another can of worms entirely.

“Thea will be fine. The sooner we can get to wherever Slade’s holding Roy, the sooner this will all end.” Something dark flashed in Oliver’s eyes, caught in the light of the screens. It would have been easy to miss if he wasn’t being watched so closely.

A point had to come when all the sidestepping would end. John shifted into the other man’s viewing range, intent on prodding to make that end appear just a bit sooner. “I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to say it, but you can’t keep everything back like this. Whatever your beef with Moira, Thea needs your support. And that’s on top of everything else you’re not telling us.”

“You know as much as I do about what Slade’s doing with that drug,” Oliver said evenly, straightening and looking John in the eye.

“That’s the obvious part,” he replied, crossing his arms over his chest. “Felicity and I barely understand what his real angle is. We’re not blind, Oliver! Sara’s keeping mum out of respect for you, but if we’re going to be able to keep helping you on this, you’re going to have to start talking.”

Predictably: “It’s complicated.” Everything about Oliver’s past was complicated.

“We’ve got time.” John gestured at the unmoving screens and switched gears. He forced his voice to soften and rolled his shoulders in the most plaintively supplicating manner he could. He shifted a fraction closer into the other man’s personal space and tried to read whatever was in his eyes. “Come on, man. You’re giving Felicity ideas. A lot of the _wrong_ ideas. Before you got here yesterday, she was starting in on some weird idea that you and Slade––”

“Not now, Digg.”

Just like that, Oliver went into lockdown. John knew he wasn’t getting anything without a fight, one that they couldn’t afford right now. It was hard to believe he’d once thought that Oliver was just a shallow socialite in need of protection from his own reckless self. It was hard to see him as anything other than the secretive, stone fort of a vigilante he was right now. The last few days had seen the younger man looking frustrated and exhausted almost beyond capacity. He’d been growing increasingly more tense and withdrawn since he’d found out his old friend-turned-enemy was alive and within the city. John had become familiar with the haunted look that Oliver got in his eyes whenever he was forced to even mention his time on Lian Yu. The vigilante had looked like a ghost when he and Felicity had all but dragged him back to the States earlier that year, after he’d run back to the island after the Undertaking. But nothing, _nothing_ at all, could stand up to the steel vault he had become the moment John had tried bringing up Slade Wilson.

Absolutely nothing reflected out of Oliver’s pupils.

“What happened yesterday night?” John pressed the matter, dropping the lighthearted act in the face of that cold front. “I had you both in my rifle sight for a few minutes. He was trying to beat you into the ground and I couldn’t get a clear shot without risking taking you down with him. By the time you were on your feet again, you both disappeared from view. I’d have had to position myself on another rooftop to get him in my line of sight again. Almost did move, would have if Sara hadn’t suddenly appeared and gotten you out of there.”

He wasn’t saying it. He hoped he didn’t need to spell it out: for a few precious minutes, anything could have happened – and those few minutes of the unknown increasingly appeared to weigh in on what they were facing.

Oliver remained stonily silent.

“Christ!” John swore, finally looking away and stalking to the rifle rack. “It’s on your conscience, Oliver.” Maybe he’d disassemble and reassemble a Barrett a few times to take the edge off his frustration.

Just before he got to the guns, Felicity came running in. She wasn’t alone.

“Okay, I know that Arrow Cave 2.0 is supposed to be completely, utterly super-secret, but I had to bring her.” She was dragging Sin along behind her, nearly tripping in her rush to get to her workstation. “Slade – Deathstroke – whatever we’re sticking with – he’s got Sara!”

“This van started chasing us a few blocks from Verdant,” Sin explained, torn between staring at the strange place she’d been dragged to and trying to convey what had happened. “Some men chased us into a warehouse and Sara started fighting them. She made me hide and I saw one of the guys throw a whole crate at her like it was nothing. I ran and called Felicity to contact…the Arrow.”

John could see moment everything clicked into place for the girl. And that was before she’d seen the hooded suit in its case. Her eyes were half-scared, half-awed as further comprehension dawned.

“Roy knows, doesn’t he?” she asked faintly.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Oliver said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Did you hear them say where they were taking Sara? In which direction did the van go, did you see?”

Felicity’s main screen started flashing red and beeping. “You’re not going to like this,” she announced.

Finally, the scanners had picked up an energy spike. It was small, but there was no hiding its location. The blinking red dot was at Queen Consolidated.

Before John could finish processing that or turn to look at Oliver and Sin, Felicity directed their attention to another screen.

“You’re not going to like this, either.”

She’d captured a camera image from several minutes ago, from what looked like a street camera near Verdant. A goon was loading an unconscious Sara into the back of a dark van. Beside the van, Deathstroke stared right at the camera like he wanted to be seen.

“I tracked the van by reactivating its GPS through the rental company it’s from. They’re at your building, Oliver.”

***

Every single sound in the room was amplified at least thrice in Sara’s ears. She blinked her eyes open as carefully as she could manage. The room she was in was dark, but the sooner her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, the sooner she could figure how to get out of there. She could feel her arms bound tight above her head and her feet were just barely touching the ground. She remembered her head being slammed into the floor. She remembered the fight and telling Sin to run. She remembered––

“Hello, Sara.”

A light suddenly flickered on above her head. She could make out Deathstroke dimly in the doorway of the room. All dressed in a formal suit and overcoat. Not Deathstroke but Slade Wilson. She had known when she’d first set eyes on him that he would cause bad things to happen. The Mirakuru had not yet been in his bloodstream then, had not yet had a chance to warp his mind. He was as dangerous as any member of the League, but his methods and motivations were less predictable to her. There was no limit to what he might do.

“This is your grand plan to draw Oliver into a fight?” she asked, staring him right in the eye. She wasn’t afraid of him – at least not enough to look away. Her throat burned as she spoke, and she wondered how long she had actually been unconscious or if she had been given anything to keep her that way long after she’d been knocked out.

“We haven’t really had a chance to talk, have we,” Slade said instead, coming to stand a few feet in front of her. The black patch where his right eye had once been blended easily with the shadows. His face was half a skeleton, shrouded in darkness until he inched only a little bit closer. “I thought we should, considering the part you played in the events on Lian Yu.”

Sara tensed. She had seen enough last night that what came out of her mouth next didn’t sound as confident as it should. “You burned before I got there and I was far away from you when you drowned.”

“Is that what you think? Nothing more than chance and circumstance were at work?” Slade was circling now, walking around her like a predator circling prey; the Gippsland phantom cat circling a canary just before the kill. But this big cat was no legend and this canary was not small and helpless.

“No, your _choices!_ ”

The moment Slade got close enough, Sara pulled herself up by the chains and hooked her legs over his shoulders. She took her chance to try and incapacitate him, twisting as hard as she could. If a broken neck did not kill him, it would at least allow her a few hours to get back to the lair before he could retaliate. She cried out as she propelled herself in a circle and used the chain to help her swing to the left, counting on the momentum to make up for her slighter weight and throw Slade against the wall.

Her shriek became pained and shrill as Slade grabbed her by the thighs and squeezed. The Mirakuru made his hands into vices, tearing her downwards and to the side along with him. Her shoulders burned with warnings of near-dislocation as the chains came crashing down on her back and she crashed into the floor. She forced herself to ignore the pain in her legs and arms, fighting to crawl back to her feet.

“The choices were not only my own.” Slade’s fingers twisted cruelly in her hair as he hauled her up and started wrapping the chains around her arms and torso. His breath was like a furnace against her ear as he snarled into it. “I could not care less whether you live or die by the time it’s all over, but you _will_ play your part here until the very end.”

Two goons came and dragged her out of the room by the arms. She was forced to stumble along half-blind from the pain of the grip on her hair and the brightness of the hall they stepped into. The chains worked to bruise her arms and ribs, but she focused her eyes on what was in front of her. She didn’t know where she was, only that the low ceilings declared it was somewhere subterranean. The walls and floors were old concrete and the corridor stretched out far up ahead. Before she could think beyond that, they came to a halt beside a thick metal door.

“You won’t get in my way,” Slade vowed, pushing it open.

At his signal, the two thugs shoved Sara into a dimly-lit room. The chains were still wrapped tight around her body and her arms. The door hadn’t slammed shut on her for more than a moment before she heard a soft groan in the corner. On a rusty cot with an attached IV drip by the head, a familiar blond started stirring.

“Hey, what happened to you?” Sara rushed over just as Roy opened his eyes.

She reached out with her bound hands to inspect the needle embedded just below his elbow and see if the drip tube was securely attached. Before she could do much more, he rolled to sit up and grab her by the throat. No recognition flickered in his hazy blue gaze.

***

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_The man resting against the log was very dangerous. Anthony Ivo was dangerous, yes. Anthony’s crew was dangerous, too. But the man resting against the log, obviously half-burnt and limping through the woods on sheer willpower alone, was another sort of animal entirely. He’d gunned down one of the crewmen just to make a point and the blades sheathed across his back were very likely not just for show. Sara was truly afraid of him._

_And she couldn’t understand why Oliver wasn’t._

_After their bizarre reunion, after the search for the Hozen and the reemergence of the island’s other two survivors, she was starting to feel like she was drowning in the sea. She’d carried that feeling for months after Anthony’s men had fished her out and the doctor had allowed her to live. She thought she’d never feel that again. Watching Oliver quietly settling the dangerous man with the half-burnt face against a log, trying not to be too obvious about keeping the sharp-eyed Chinese archer in her line of sight, she was slipping under the waves again._

_“I should have explained sooner. This is Sara.” She listened to Oliver making introductions, feeling like this was a repeat of her induction into Anthony’s crew. She had thought Oliver was on her side, her friend and her former lover. He’d grabbed her hand and dragged her with him when they’d run from the ship crew. But the way he spoke now, a hand on the dangerous man’s shoulder, eyes carefully on the Chinese archer, was the way that Anthony’s mercenaries spoke with one another. This was risk assessment._ Sara _was the risk to_ their _unit._ _She had to prove herself._

_“Sara, this is Shado,” Oliver continued, gesturing at the other woman in the group. “She’s been teaching me archery.” He said her name the way he said Thea’s, as though he thought of her as another sister. Maybe he’d been adopted into a new family on the island, not some sort of survivalist military unit. And if Oliver Queen, playboy extraordinaire, had spent a year on an island with a girl like Shado and not become intimate with her, Sara might have something to hope for when they finally got home. She might have something – or Laurel might. The future would hold different things for this new version of the boy she’d known._

_“We don’t have time for long-winded pleasantries, kid,” the half-burnt man – some sort of mercenary, Sara was guessing – cut in, struggling to get to his feet. He’d had enough of resting and had slung an arm heavily over Oliver’s shoulder. They were comfortable enough with each other to take that kind of liberty without asking._

_“…And this old survivor is Slade Wilson,” Oliver said instead, shifting his weight so that they could start moving again. His grin was positively impish. “He’s not as grouchy as he looks. Not usually.”_

_“I could really do with a better-looking crutch,” the older man sniped, shoving lightly enough not to off-balance either of them. Something in the set of his mouth told Sara he wasn’t actually annoyed._

_It was Shado who brought her attention back to more serious matters. “Are you certain that this drug – the Mirakuru – will save Slade?” she asked quietly, looking from the stone and the compass in her hands to Sara, wanting certainty in her answers._

_“That’s what Anthony told me.” She was a newcomer here, and with or without Oliver’s help, she had to become someone they could trust. Instinct told her to hold back, just a bit. Some secrets just couldn’t be spoken without prompting. It was still possible they wouldn’t find what they were looking for inside the submarine._

_“We have to at least try and find it,” Oliver said. He and Slade were a few paces ahead now, but he’d turned to send Sara a look of appeal. “If there’s a chance that serum is there and that it works – we’ve got to take it.”_

_Something about the way he said that stuck with her. She watched as he started moving again, head bent close to Slade’s. They seemed to be having some sort of private discussion. She could see his face partly in profile, caught the flash of tender apology in the downward turn of his lips and frown on his brow. They had history between them that Sara just knew that she didn’t want to really be seeing. Oliver treated Shado like a sister. It had been a year since Sara had last seen him._

_She realized she was being watched. Shado locked gazes with her, coolly assessing. More than ever, she felt like an outsider looking in. She had a feeling Shado and Slade already knew her story. She knew next to nothing about theirs – theirs and Oliver’s. Oliver’s and Slade’s._

_“Looks like a lot’s happened this last year,” she remarked. She forced herself to smile lightly. It was the only way things would keep making sense._

***

The last year and a half had to be one of the craziest that Laurel had ever had. Oliver had come back and things had been confusing for a long time. Tommy – she would never really forget Tommy. The Undertaking had left its mark on the entire city. Everything had spiraled quicker and quicker into a new kind of chaos after that. And now Sara being back was almost a normal thing again, working in a night club while Laurel herself was part of the AA. She wasn’t the same person she had been a year ago. The way she’d gotten her job back at the DA’s office was only the tip of the iceberg.

But that wasn’t the important thing right now. She’d promised to keep an eye on Thea. Oliver had come and gone, Moira had appeared for a while but been called away, and now it was her turn to spend time with the newly reawakened teen girl. She took a deep breath and let a smile slide onto her lips.

“Mind some company?” she called out as soon as she’d checked to make sure that Thea was actually awake and able to have visitors.

The girl she’d been seeing as something like a new distant little sister in the last few months smiled back at her from the bed. She was free of the IV drip and sitting upright with the help of a mound of pillows. On the bedside table, a crumpled Big Belly Burger bag sat as evidence of her much-improved condition.

“Guess I’m getting one-on-one visits all night, huh?” Thea said wryly as Laurel settled into the chair by the bed.

“Oliver?” she asked, gesturing to the fast food bag. She knew Moira wouldn’t have thought to bring that. “I heard he told you what’s been happening.”

“It’s been more hectic for Mom, since she was pretty much out of the loop until the cops started on the questions. I told the detectives what I saw then let Mom know I didn’t need her company the rest of tonight.” The way she spoke, it sounded to Laurel like Thea would have preferred her mother not know what had been happening. In fact, there was something decidedly off about how she mentioned Moira.

“Roy will be found,” Laurel promised, shifting her bag off her lap and pulling out a package of cinnamon pretzels. “Your brother’s put Sara in charge at Verdant until you’re release from here, and they’re both cooperating with the police. If you’re keeping your mom out of this, well, I’m here if you need me. I’d like to be able to help _one_ of you Queens.”

She wasn’t very good at the whole consoling angle, but she wondered if Thea’s reluctance to have her mother around had to do with how this latest touch of scandal could affect the campaign or if it was something new and personal in that classic evasive Queen way. She pulled out a container of cinnamon pretzel pieces out of her bag, prying open the packaging and offering some to the young girl. After everything that had come of accusing Sebastian Blood, it was nice to spend a little quiet time like this. Even if it was in a hospital.

“Trouble with Ollie?” Thea asked, partly teasing. She took one of the smaller pieces and popped it into her mouth.

“Just trying to make sure he knows what he’s doing at the head of your family company,” Laurel said lightly. “It looks like he’s handling things better now, but a part of me really wonders if it wouldn’t be better for your mom to take the helm again if she doesn’t make it to the mayor’s office.”

Something in Thea’s expression shifted. She looked the slightest bit frustrated. “She _is_ better than Ollie at keeping secrets.”

“Hey, everything your mom’s done, it’s been for your family,” Laurel couldn’t help but repeat the lines from the courtroom. Had it really been months since then?

It didn’t seem to have been the right thing to say, Thea’s expression darkening all over again. “What if – what if she’s keeping things _from_ her family that could change everything?”

“Thea?”

The girl on the bed shifted, brushing away a bit of pretzel sugar from the side of her mouth and drawing her knees up close to her chest. “I told Ollie this earlier – no matter what the doctors say, I’m _sure_ I was hallucinating from something those guys in the alley shot me with. I don’t know if it’s still in my system now or not, but I could have sworn I heard my mom talking to Malcolm Merlyn. But he’s _dead_!”

Laurel wanted to say something, but Thea continued before she could.

“…I must have been hallucinating. He said he was my real father.”

Knock-knock!

Neither woman had a spare moment to recover from the shock of that strange thought when someone rapped politely on the half-shut door. It pushed inwards carefully, and in walked a man Laurel couldn’t place having seen anywhere before. He was not as tall as Oliver, but broader and thicker-built. He cut an imposing figure in his pressed dark suit and overcoat, was perhaps in his mid-forties, with the silver streaked in his hair and beard and the faint wrinkles on his brow. The most memorable thing about him was the black patch over his right eye.

“Mr. Wilson!” Thea cleared up the mystery for her, hastily arranging her face in a polite smile. Her gaze zeroes in on the bright bouquet in one of her visitor’s hands. “Is that for me?”

“I dropped by your mother’s campaign office and heard that you had been admitted,” Mr. Wilson said, coming over to place the flowers in Thea’s waiting arms. He had a decidedly Australian accent. “Though by all appearances, you shouldn’t have to be kept here much longer.” He eyed the lack of IV or machines in the room with approval then turned a more appraising, though still genial gaze to Laurel. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting you before, Miss…?”

“Laurel Lance, ADA,” the lawyer introduced herself with a quick smile, standing to shake his hand. “I’m a family friend.” She glanced at the bouquet, identifying the daisies that made up most of it, unable to say the same of the yellow spade-like blooms with blushing orange centers.

“Slade Wilson, a recent sponsor for Moira Queen’s mayoral campaign,” the man she assumed was a foreign entrepreneur new-come to the city replied in kind. He had a firm grip, almost cautious of being _too_ firm. His skin ran unexpectedly hotter than usual, too, Laurel noted. She caught him staring right at her face, as though trying to get a read on her right back. It was almost unnerving.

“And investor in Queen Consolidated,” Thea piped up, tracing one of the yellow blooms with a finger as she smiled up at them, unaware of the mutual appraisal going on. “If the article my friend sent me the other day was accurate.”

Laurel suddenly flashed back to the coffee she’d had with Oliver around then. She looked at Mr. Wilson with renewed interest. Was this what her friend had been talking about as a countermeasure for Isabel Rochev’s injunction filing? The longer she looked at the new player in the game, the more she got the sense that he was a dangerous man to cross. It would work in Oliver’s favor – if the man really was backing his side of things. Something in her gut made her worry, but she was still not sure if she should trust her instincts about Alderman Blood. She didn’t want to make a mistake that would have to do with her friend and his family.

“Your brother and I haven’t quite come to an agreement on that just yet,” the Australian said blandly, single eye now focused solely on Thea. “I haven’t seen him since our lunch the other day. I thought I might run into him here with you, though. Alas, I cannot stay much longer. I only came to see how you are faring.”

“It was nice of you to drop by,” Laurel rejoined the conversation, trying to steer things away from any direction that could upset Thea again.

“I’m glad I did,” Mr. Wilson said, shifting a little, as though preparing to leave. “Ms. Lance, if my assistant can locate Mr. Queen in the next few days for a second meeting, I’ll be sure to mention what a lovely friend he and his family have in you. And Ms. Queen, I am truly glad to find you have recovered well. I do hope whoever attacked you will be apprehended soon.”

He bid them both a good evening and headed out the way he’d come. Laurel turned her eyes to Thea, watching the girl’s eyes drop to the flowers on her lap again. She didn’t know how to start up the conversation again after the sudden interlude. Instead, her mind wandered to where exactly Oliver had run off to. It was good to know he wasn’t completely neglecting his responsibilities after all, but he was still being very mysterious – and conspicuous in his absence.

“Hey, Thea?” she said after a few minutes more had passed. “I just remembered that I have an early start tomorrow. I’ll pass by again before you check out of here, okay?” She leaned over and squeezed one of the girl’s shoulders. “And if you want to talk again about…what you think you dreamed up…I’m here.”

Thea just smiled gratefully. They parted with a quiet hug and Laurel headed out for the night. It was only when she was already on the street and about to hail a cab that she wondered something odd: how had Mr. Wilson specifically known that Thea had been admitted at the hospital because she had been attacked?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, your comments and miscellaneous thoughts are thoroughly appreciated! I'll try and have the more... Slade-Ollie involved chapter up next week, but no promises for an exact date.
> 
> Still... The Lance sisters. Hard to get a handle on writing them, but I enjoy their Slade-related interactions. Did you?


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is _not_ making up for missing Valentines Day. In fact, it really was supposed to come out the day _after_ Hearts Day. 
> 
> This is so far the longest chapter I've set down - so you can see why it had to be separated from the last one.
> 
> As always, no beta so all mistakes are my own.

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_It wasn’t fair. Oliver had only just gotten back to Slade and Shado and had only just managed to drag Sara along with him. He’d lost her at sea once and wasn’t losing her again. He’d never thought that his friends had died when Ivo’s men had riddled the old fuselage with bullets, but he hadn’t expected to see the full extent of Slade’s injuries. Now the soldier would die if they couldn’t find the Mirakuru. It wasn’t fair – but if he had learned anything in the last year, it was that life itself was very much unfair._

_Oliver and the girls managed to get Slade though the shallowest part of the lagoon and down the hatch into the belly of the submarine. They slid along the cold wetness of the metal hull, testing the rusted ladder rungs before working in tandem to get their friend into the wreck. They had their flashlights and the small lamp to help them find their way in, but it wasn’t enough illumination to see all corners of the narrow space. It was a miracle the old war vessel had not completely sunk to the bottom of the inlet. They had to hurry, and that meant leaving Slade alone near the ladder to the hatch, if they were going to search as quickly and efficiently as possible. It tore at Oliver inside to see his mentor trying to keep down the visible signs of his pain; he hadn’t had time to say he was sorry, and if they did not hurry, he might never get the chance. There was no telling how closely Ivo and his men were following them._

_When Shado found and pried open the box with the syringes of Mirakuru, Oliver nearly sobbed with relief. His stomach roiled and all he wanted to do was say sorry over and over again for the trouble that he had caused. Reaching for the syringe, he jerked when Sara grabbed his wrist._

_“Didn’t you hear what I just said about sedatives?” she insisted, looking from Oliver to Shado. “Without one, the drug will kill him.”_

_“Penicillin or barbital should work,” Shado said, turning to check the cupboards and shelves._

_Tugging his hand back, Oliver tucked the syringe close to his chest as he helped Shado go through the shelves. How could he possibly explain to Sara how important it was to cure Slade? He didn’t blame her for the bombardment; that was all on Ivo and his men. Oliver blamed himself for running onto that field, for causing Slade to run after him. In the midst of everything that was happening, he remembered the utterly_ stupid _and_ irrational _reason he had been so eager to run in the first place._

_“There’s a chance the drug won’t work, even if we do find a sedative to balance it,” Sara said, just as Shado pulled out an empty vial of what had likely been some form of a sedative._

_“He’s dying as it is.” Shado saved Oliver from having to speak himself. She was as much on edge as he was, perhaps more so because she had been here, doing what she could to keep Slade alive while Oliver had been on the freighter. They locked gazes and all Oliver could think to try and project was his thanks._

_They practically ran back to where Slade waited, Oliver’s heart jumping up to choke his throat for the one brief moment before he noticed the faint rise and fall of the AISIS operative’s chest. How much time did they have left?_

_“Slade––!” he started to call out, stumbling mid-run when the unmistakable sound of heavy boots bracing against the side and top of the sub echoed in the room. As Shado dragged Sara to help make an attempt at securing the hatch, he sank down, shaking Slade to get him to focus. “We found the Mirakuru…”_

_“…But it could kill me anyway,” the soldier rasped. Even at death’s door, he could still read everything in the younger man’s eyes. The sheer impossibility of it made Oliver simultaneously want to laugh and to scream._

_Shado settled on Slade’s other side, one hand going to his shoulder. It was just the three of them, survivors all, what passed for a family here. It struck Oliver that Slade hardly ever spoke about his son Joey. He didn’t even know if he would want the boy – whatever other family Slade had in Australia – to know how he had died. If he was going to die. If Oliver, Shado, and Sara ever got off this island to tell their story. The thoughts were tearing him apart inside. Maybe a part of him had known this was how it would end. Maybe this was why he had never allowed himself to actively fantasize about a life beyond the island that included Slade Wilson._

_“…I shouldn’t have tried to push you away.” The words drew Oliver back to the moment. Slade had taken hold of his free hand and was still staring straight at his face. “Still, you’ve much of life yet to live. I never expected you to return the sentiment even in the slightest.”_

_Oliver had been unwilling and unable to interrupt when Slade spoke, but once he realized what he meant, he leaned his head on the other man’s shoulder and pressed his lips against the sweaty, grime-coated skin on his neck. He inhaled deeply and tried to commit his unique scent to memory. On the mountain, Slade had said the heart could become a liability. He had been telling himself that, as much as he had been warning Oliver off. He felt something, something akin to the nameless_ emotion _that had grown and grown in Oliver’s own chest._

_“You and Shado…take care of each other…”_

_The shock of the words, their intended meaning plain in Slade’s eyes and voice, rooted Oliver to the spot. He noticed a moment too late that the operative had taken his other hand and uncapped the syringe needle. He used Oliver’s thumb to push down the plunger._

_The next few minutes were hazy. Oliver dimly acknowledged Shado helping him hold Slade down through the older man’s thrashing and screaming. He couldn’t care less about Sara standing watch across the room. He focused on each tear of blood welling up in Slade’s eyes and streaking down his cheeks. The screams drove hammers through his chest and reverberated in his mind. He would never forget the screams. Because the moment that they stopped and Slade slumped boneless in his and Shado’s arms, Oliver’s heart died with him._

***

“All hallway cams are loop-playing yesterday’s feed and the door should unlock in three…two… Wow, I’m good. I beat my own time.”

The solid steel door in the alley behind Queen Consolidated clicked and swung open to the accompanying sound of Felicity crowing from the comms.

“We can celebrate when we’ve got Sara and Roy back,” Oliver said, eyes narrowed into slits beneath his mask. He was sinking himself into the persona of the Arrow; it was the fastest way he knew to focus himself on what they had to do.

“I’m not so sold on the idea of leaving Sin by the car,” Digg whispered, stepping after him through the door, gun in hand. It was loaded with tranquilizer darts, extras tucked into the magazine pouch at his hip. They’d replicated the formula used on Roy, in case he or Sara would need it when they were found. “We shouldn’t be involving her in all this.”

“She knows about Sara and she’s a good friend of Roy,” the Arrow replied, shifting through the corridors to where Felicity indicated an elevator had access to a special subterranean floor. “Felicity brought her in already so that’ll have to be enough.”

“We really should think about getting codenames for everyone,” Felicity piped up, the familiar clacking of the keyboard blending with her voice on the audio feed. “Elevator’s the next hall over on your left and I’ve got it open for you. Expect three hostiles as soon as you get out. I’m guessing armed, but there’s no security feed in the halls below and I’m working on what I think are cells.”

Three wasn’t a bad number. Oliver walked right into the shaft cart, tugging two arrows out of his quiver as he did. “Not the first time we’ve gone in blind,” he commented, glancing back to see if Diggle had followed right after him. “Just keep at it, Felicity. Tell us when you get something – and we’ll talk about codenames when this is over.”

As the doors closed behind them and the elevator began its descent, Diggle shifted into position to take point for their exit. They had less than a minute before they reached the basement, nothing but thoughts of what could be happening to Sara and Roy pushing them onward. The doors slid open and they raised their weapons. Two quick shoulder shots from Diggle’s gun and one thigh shot from Oliver’s bow, and the three men Felicity had identified were unconscious on the ground. They took advantage of the lack of security feed and quickly dragged them into the nearest unlocked room.

“If they have Mirakuru in their blood, this should keep them out for at least the next few hours,” Digg said, dragging over chains from a corner. They were a little rusty but thick enough to do the job of holding the escapees in place until they could be gotten to the proper authorities. “Longer, if they’re still unchanged.”

Oliver remained quiet, helping with the chains. When he looked up at his friend, it was with a sense of heavy duty in both his heart and his eyes. “John,” he said, choosing his words as carefully as possible. “If we run into Slade here, I want you to stand down.”

“He’s dangerous,” Digg tried to argue, weaving the end of the length of chain as tight as he could in the absence of a proper padlock.

“No one knows that better than I do.” The Arrow crossed to stand before his friend, tall and decisive and grim. “But I’m telling you now: if he’s down here, I’ll handle him.”

***

Laurel hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that something significant and strange had happened when she had met Mr. Wilson in Thea’s hospital room. She had enough on her plate at the DA’s Office already, watching her back and defending the position she had secured for herself. Her instincts were telling her something, but she knew she shouldn’t dwell on it. Settling into her seat in the cab, she sighed and turned to look out the window. She wasn’t too far from the hospital and what Thea had said before her visitor had arrived stuck with her. Malcolm Merlyn and all the memories associated with him still sent goosebumps up her arms. She’d come to accept Tommy’s death, but the reality that the world was turning without him and that it was his father’s fault still hit her hard when she least expected it.

 _‘Thea’s just under a lot of stress,’_ she told herself mentally, willing her mind to settle down. Since Sara had come back from the dead, she felt she personally understood some of Thea’s struggles of the last year.

Her eyes drifted upwards to the fast-approaching Queen Consolidated logo up ahead. A few lights on the upper floors were on, but it wasn’t unusual on a weeknight. As her cab turned at the corner, she noticed a familiar young girl standing beside an idling vehicle at the curb.

“Stop here, please,” she told the taxi driver, passing him a few bills and waving off his attempt to give her the change. “Sin, hey! What are you doing all the way here?”

The teen looked anxious, rocking back and forth on her feet until she noticed Laurel walking over. “Hi Laurel. I was just watching my friend’s ride for him.”

“Outside Queen Consolidated?”

The SUV was a nondescript rental with no identifying marks. She didn’t have to look directly at Sin to let the girl know that she didn’t believe her story. She didn’t have to look directly at Sin to know that the pacing was making her even more nervous. Maybe she was more paranoid than usual tonight, after everything that had happened, but she could still spot a lying teenager when she was faced with one.

“It’s not a crime, right?” The teen tried for nonchalance, fiddling with an earring and keeping her eyes turned away.

“The streets aren’t as safe as they used to be,” Laurel said, taking note of the license plate to type into her phone later. “I can stay with you until your friend comes back.”

“He should be here soon. I’ll be fine.”

When her scrutiny made the girl step back into the glow of a lamppost, she caught sight of what was most definitely _not_ an earring in Sin’s ear.

“Is that an earpiece?” Laurel asked, dropping all pretenses and shifting to play the city official card. “Sin, this is starting to look a little less legal by the minute. I’m going to have to report you to the proper authorities and if you’re arrested, you won’t be seeing Thea get out of the hospital or finding out when Roy’s located.”

That last bit seemed to have gotten the girl’s attention. Something bright shot through her eyes and she started, becoming defensive. “The car belongs to John Diggle. Oliver’s bodyguard, you know? He asked me to watch it for a while, okay?”

“Why would he ask you to do that?” If anything, Sin was making less and less sense to Laurel. “Where’s Oliver?”

Just then, the teen went completely still. Her hand rose to her earpiece, then froze halfway. She took out a set of keys and tried to get around Laurel to the driver’s door of the SUV. Before Laurel could stop her, the girl turned pleading eyes on her.

“They’re not going to like it, but Sara and Roy need help right now so – just get in.”

Minutes later, it registered in Laurel’s mind that they were driving the vehicle into the alley behind Oliver’s building. Then everything simply clicked into place when Sara came half-limping out of a door with some sort of gun in her hands. Right behind her, Roy Harper was being half-carried by John Diggle and _the_ _Arrow_.

Or rather, now that Laurel was seeing everything all at once, _Oliver Queen_. And if the way she was holding that gun was anything to go by, Laurel’s sister was the Black Canary. She was starting to understand Thea’s feelings even better.

***

Sara could barely breathe. Her vision was going hazy at the edges and the burning sensation in her throat worsened by the second. The chains around her wrists rattled as she clawed at Roy’s arms, trying to get him to let go of her neck.

“…St…op…!” she gasped, trying to figure out how to snap him out of whatever trance he’d fallen into.

She twisted to the side, trying to anchor her leg on his shoulder much like she’d done with Slade. She couldn’t focus on much, but she thought she could see a spark of _something_ in his eyes that hadn’t been there moments before.

Her strength was flagging, bound hands sliding down in front of her. She tried to push with her leg again, but she was still bruised and battered from her fight with Slade.

And suddenly she was flying backwards through the air, crashing into the wall.

“You’re not here,” Roy rasped, stalking towards her. He ripped off the IV cord at his wrist, swaying a little as he did. It was the first sign Sara had seen that he was not completely well since he had woken up.

“…Roy, you have to snap out of it,” she gasped, scrambling to get to her feet and get the chains off at the same time. Her throat burned from the effort. “We need to get out of here!”

The young boy loomed over her hunched shoulders, pressing her into the wall. His eyes were clearer now, but the sentiments flashing through them were rage and disgust. “Rochev was wrong. I’m _not_ going crazy!”

Somewhere in the back of Sara’s mind, she stored away that tidbit of information. Now, though, she struggled to whip the length of chain upwards to smack the side of Roy’s face. “How’s _this_ for real?”

She lunged after him as he fell on his side, gathering the chains closer so that she could wrap them around his arms and torso. She was still caught up in them at her wrists, but it was one way to regain control of the situation. She needed to get Roy to see that she was no hallucination, get him to trust her so that they could get him medical aid. Before he could get his bearing back, she grabbed the sides of his face and slammed his head as hard as she could into the ground.

“Snap out of it!” she hissed, using her elbows to pin his shoulders in place. “The sooner you do, the sooner we can figure how to get out of here.” Straddling his hips, she was trying to see how much damage he’d taken. His lips were chapped and he looked tired and pale. The Mirakuru healed almost everything, but it looked like extra time would be more crucial to Roy’s healing.

“…Sara?” the boy finally groaned, eyes going from unfocused to focused with an unnerving speed. “…You’re real then, huh?” His shoulders relaxed and he lay back properly on the ground. He really looked so tired. After a moment, his eyes slid to stare at something behind Sara’s head. A second later, he twisted his head to the side and closed his eyes. “How long have I been missing?”

His brain seemed to be working properly, Sara determined as she listened for indicators beyond the exhaustion in his voice. “You’ve been gone almost two days. The police are looking for you.” After a beat, she decided to tell him more. “Thea was hospitalized, but she’s awake again now and should be going home soon.”

“She did follow me into the alley…?” Roy sounded like someone trying to determine just how much of what he knew was real or not. He struggled to sit up, groaning and rubbing at his head.

“Sin found her in time. No worries.” Sara pulled him to his feet, then held out her hands in front of him. “A little help?”

Roy’s hand shook a little as he broke the chains off her wrists. “Where are we?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she answered back, going right for the door to tug at the knob. It was heavier than it looked. “Great. Looks like they built this especially for you.”

Making his way over, Roy pushed against the steel. “They took a lot of my blood,” he admitted, straining as he forced his body against the weight of the door. It only just managed to creak open inch by inch, even with Sara’s help.

She listed the facts in her mind. Roy had likely been drugged up to his eyeballs or strapped to the transfuser. They were definitely underground. One of the other rooms likely had some medical equipment stored in it, if the IV Roy had been strapped to was an indicator. She’d counted two of Slade’s men, but there was no telling how many more lurked along the passages. A soft grunt jerked her attention to the side just in time to catch Roy sinking to his knees. He was still too weak for this level of exertion. The door was slowly closing without the pressure against it; they’d have to wait until Roy had rested enough before they could attempt opening it again. She braced the teen up with one shoulder before giving the door a last half-hearted shove.

Suddenly two pairs of hands appeared in the slit between the door and its frame.

“Just gotta get it about half open,” Oliver grunted, his masked face appearing just behind one of the pairs of hands, covered in familiar green gloves.

His voice gave Roy the strength he needed to push against the door again. He was trembling badly, sweat breaking out on his forehead and sliding along his cheeks and neck, but the Mirakuru strength in his body was the edge they needed to get out of the room.

With Digg and Oliver’s help, Sara got Roy through the door before it could close again. The two men supported him between them as they made their way along the hall. Sara took Digg’s gun to walk on ahead.

“We took care of the guards already,” Oliver said, indicating the half-visible foot of one of the thugs they’d tranquilized on the way. “There’s a sort of med bay a few doors down, but it was mostly cleared out before we got here.”

“Ollie, it was Slade,” Sara said, checking ahead anyway, gun at the ready. “I woke up in another room and he had his goons lock me in with Roy. He’s pumped the Mirakuru from Roy’s blood into some of the inmates from Iron Heights already.”

“We’ll worry about that later,” he replied, passing the full brunt of Roy’s weight to Diggle so that he could ready his bow and an arrow in case more men arrived. “Right now, we have to get you two back to the base. Sin, you got Digg’s car?” This last, he spoke into the comm unit in his ear.

The situation was about to get more grim, unless they found a way to counteract Slade’s movements soon. When they got to the ground floor, Sara was surprised to see the Queen Consolidated logo on one of the walls. Of all places she could have been taken, this was not one that she had expected. Sneaking out into the alley, she glimpsed familiar buildings all around them. Slade Wilson had used Oliver’s own company as the base of operations for the transfusions.

She started to lower the gun in her hand when she caught sight of Diggle’s SUV just at the alley entrance. Sin was sliding down from the driver’s seat. Sara started towards her, an apology on her lips, when she saw who stepped around the vehicle from the other side.

“How badly hurt is he?” Laurel’s voice was steady. She leveled a steely look at all of them, but helped Sin and Diggle get Roy settled into the back seat as comfortably as possible. “And can we take him to Starling General?”

This last question, she directed at Oliver. Sara had no doubts her sister had figured it all out, being very clear that she was coming with them wherever they were going, no matter what.

“We’ve got a place to take him,” Oliver said, using the Arrow’s voice scrambler even if it was a pitiful attempt at hiding his identity right now.

“Let’s go then.”

Sara tried to reach out for Laurel, but her sister just stepped out of her range. The hurt shone the brightest in her eyes in that moment, but there would be a time and place for everything. Roy needed medical attention and they needed to find out what Slade was planning next.

***

Everything was crumbling around him.

Oliver was glad he had his bike and could race ahead of his friends back to the base. He could argue with himself that letting Sin know about their operations was a necessity borne of Sara’s kidnapping, but the survivalist in him still hissed that Felicity could have just gotten information from her without revealing anything. Laurel knowing posed even more problems. Sara was her sister and she cared about her – but she was also the daughter of a police officer and Assistant District Attorney to boot. Everything was getting more and more complicated and Slade had slipped out of the building before they’d arrived. Somehow, the sight of Felicity, anxiously waiting with a collection of all their medical equipment on one of the spare tables, calmed him.

“I have had _radio_ silence from Digg since you guys got Sara and Roy,” she said as soon as she caught sight of him. “Then you call in to tell me we need more of the sedative ready as a precaution – and to gather the medical supplies? What happened? Did Slade’s men do something to the comms?”

“We all made it out,” Oliver reassured her, pushing off the hood and tugging off the Arrow mask. He paused in the act of putting away his bow and unbuckling his quiver. “…But Laurel saw us. She and the others should be here in a few minutes.”

His head was pounding in anticipation of the fight that would certainly erupt at some point within the next few hours. He didn’t know if he could take any more wrenches in his already fast-unraveled planning. He’d never been much of a chess player, and right now he felt like he was in the middle of a very complicated match. As Felicity trailed after him, rambling on about the possibilities for disaster this created, Oliver reflected that _some_ things were going their way.

“The transfuser wasn’t there, but Slade’s men didn’t clear out everything.” He pulled out a small green vial from one of his pockets. It was cracked, about half-empty, but it was still everything that they could hope for. “We found this in their med bay. It’s a small sample of Mirakuru.”

“If even a fraction of the men Slade broke out of Iron Heights have the Mirakuru in their system, we’re going to need all the help we can _get_ ,” Felicity said, taking the cracked vial and transferring its contents into a new one.

Too many people were learning his secrets lately. But if Slade still had the transfuser in his possession _and_ if he had at least a few of his men juiced up on the miracle drug, he could continue making an entire army even with Roy out of his clutches. The wisps of a new idea were forming in his mind, but he was hesitant to involve Felicity in them. After having just gotten Roy and Sara back, he didn’t want to lose any member of his team again so soon.

“Any leads on Deathstroke?” Sara’s voice rang out from the stairwell.

She and the rest of the team came trudging down the stairs, looking no worse than when he’d last seen them. Laurel was supporting her and Digg was helping a half-conscious Roy lean on the stairs. Sin brought up the rear, still a little cautiously awe-struck. It was still nerve-racking to see the new faces in the lair, but it couldn’t be helped right now.

“You need rest first,” Oliver said, focusing on Sara as Laurel – stonily silent for the moment – helped her sit on one of the benches. “At least for a few hours.”

Apart from the beginning of the bruises ringing her neck and wrists, the erstwhile assassin favored her left side heavily. Looking beyond her, where Felicity and Sin were helping Roy lie down on an examination table, he was struck by how thoroughly their team had been crippled in so short a time. Digg could tell Lyla to keep close to ARGUS for her protection. But what could he do for Laurel? And for Sin, who had surely been seen by some of the inmates when they’d taken Sara?

At least his team knew how to work together now. Digg was teaching Sin how to hook Roy up to an IV. The would-be teen vigilante was curled on the table, working his way through two bottles of water and a box of granola bars while they checked him over. Felicity was helping Sara deal with her scrapes and bruises. It was up to Oliver now to sort through the police feeds and news reports to determine what they had to do next. What was Slade’s next move? Would he hook one of his newly-enhanced soldiers to the transfuser to further disseminate the Mirakuru among the rest of his men? Or had his absence from the hideout beneath Queen Consolidated meant that Roy had been the provider for _all_ of the inmates?

“I still don’t know if I should deck you or report you to the police.”

Laurel. For one brief moment, Oliver had managed to forget she had found them tonight. She was angry at him; that much was obvious. She kept herself in check, though, taking in everything going on around her and analyzing with her lawyer’s gaze. Leading her off to one side of Felicity’s work desk seemed the right move to give her space to say her piece.

“You knew Roy was being held under your building?” she accused. “And Sara – she’s not in uniform tonight, but she’s the Canary, isn’t she?”

“Laurel, you weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Oliver said, trying to be as placating as possible. “We only figured out where Roy was being held a few hours ago.” He knew her and she knew him. He couldn’t hide behind a careless, carefree mask this time.

“You could have told the police where to find Roy,” Laurel continued, leaning on the table and angling herself forward into Oliver’s space. The riot of emotions on her face had subsided, but she stared at him with a determination that seemed almost twice as painful. “I used to wonder why my father did such a one-eighty on his opinion on the Arrow. I still don’t understand his reasons, but even if he doesn’t know it’s you – this is one time you might have made a difference as Oliver Queen, not a hooded vigilante.”

“I cost your father his detective’s badge last time.” A part of Oliver, the almost-phantom of a time before the island and all its changes, wanted her to understand. “And the police department isn’t in any way equipped to deal with what we had to do to get Roy and Sara out of there.”

“Sara was kidnapped?”

It was easy to imagine the turmoil of realizing what had really happened. Oliver was certain that Laurel had simply thought her sister was being reckless, going with the Arrow while out of costume, but the idea that she had actually been helpless for a part of tonight jarred her. Sara returned the look, silent but daring Laurel to make a fuss now that there was no reason for it. The room tensed for the duration of the staring contest. Even Roy, propped up on the examination table, clenched his jaw in preparation for some sort of confrontation. Oliver made his decision.

“She’s safe. Roy’s safe. And now we need to focus on de-powering the Iron Heights inmates.” He looked at Felicity, passing a silent glance over Sara on the way. “I need you to go to Central City and convince Dr. Snow and Cisco Ramon to synthesize an antidote for the Mirakuru.”

“We don’t even know if it’s _possible_ to reverse the effects of that drug!” Felicity automatically protested. A moment later, she blinked and picked up the vial of green liquid on the table. “What else haven’t told us about your island adventures?”

“It _is_ possible to make a cure,” Oliver admitted. He was keenly aware that Laurel was listening intently, piecing together as much of the story as possible before she pounced on him or Sara for the rest of it. He realized that, at this point, he didn’t care anymore. “Ivo made one. And to my shame, I chose not to use it when it mattered. I destroyed it, when I could have prevented all of this.” He was seeing the betrayal on Slade’s face all over again. It was all his fault. “…Our best chance at ending this once and for all is for you to convince Dr. Snow to replicate the anti-serum.”

Stunned silence rarely reigned in the lair anymore. Their resident hacker let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a resigned laugh. “Only you would use guilt as a reason to keep things from us in the middle of a crisis. Are you _sure_ you’re not a Star Wars fan?”

The mood slightly lighter, Sara beat Diggle to volunteering to accompany her. “I was on Anthony’s ship. Maybe some of the things I learned can help speed up the research.”

“Get some rest tonight and the two of you can head off first thing in the morning,” Oliver said. Ignoring Felicity murmuring about even _more_ secrets, he entered new scanning parameters on the computer. “Roy, you can spend the night here, if you want. Sin can stay with you as long as she doesn’t touch anything. John, give Lyla a brief update that won’t make Amanda Waller send in her version of the cavalry just yet. The sooner we can locate Slade again, the better.”

“Slade…Wilson?”

For all of a few minutes, it had been easy to forget Laurel was still there. But it wasn’t quite possible to keep doing that.

“I met him at the hospital earlier,” she said. “He brought flowers for Thea and told me he was one of your mom’s sponsors. How is he involved with the Iron Heights breakout and what happened to Roy?” And what happened to you on that island, she added with her eyes.

Oliver realized just then that Sara had referred to Slade as ‘Deathstroke’ when she and the rest had arrived at the base. It was a good precaution to keep Laurel safe, but safety was less important than information right now. Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying went. And yet his tongue would not move to say what he needed.

“Was that all he did?” he asked instead. “Are you sure that those flowers weren’t poisonous?”

“What?!” Laurel straightened, jabbing him in the chest. “Why would he––”

“Slade Wilson is Deathstroke,” Sara cut in, daring Oliver to reprimand her for speaking up. “And there’s something else…”

“Rochev,” Roy picked up where she left off. “Isabel Rochev – she’s working with Wilson. I’m certain she wasn’t a hallucination.”

That explained the things he’d missed and the things he’d been suspicious of. Slade had found a way to use Queen Consolidated as his hidden base. Isabel lacked competitiveness over Slade’s favor as a prospective investor in the company. She was likely even marshalling the inmates when Slade himself was busy elsewhere.

Oliver rearmed, securing his bow and quiver. He placed his mask back on. He was numb and boiling inside at the same time.

“We’re sticking with the plan,” he said. “Digg and I will hold down the fort while Felicity and Sara take a trip to Central City to get Dr. Snow to help with the cure. Roy, you need to stay here, keep a low profile, and focus on recovering. I’ll deal with Isabel myself.”

“What about us?” Laurel demanded, gesturing at Sin and herself. “You just expect us to sit quietly and keep your secrets, that’s it?”

“That’s it,” the Arrow affirmed, glaring at her beneath his hood. “I’m going out on patrol.”

***

The truth was that Oliver needed the time to think. He sped through the Glades and did a quick circuit of the docks and the lower side of the central business district before heading not to the new base, but the old one beneath Verdant. About the only things that hadn’t been moved into the new place were his cot and the last of his training equipment. He hadn’t stayed at his family’s home in almost a week now and had no intentions of doing so again for the foreseeable future. Finding an apartment of his own had to be put on hold until Slade could be dealt with.

As he peeled off his uniform jacket and laid it out on one of the empty steel tables, he let his mind wander to places that it hadn’t been allowed to go in years. Eyes closed, he imagined Ivo approaching their camp on Lian Yu peacefully. He’d have been reunited with Sara without the accompanying violence and bloodshed. He would have gone along with Shado and Slade if they’d agreed to help Ivo look for the Mirakuru in exchange for passage off the island. Maybe they would have eventually fought Ivo if they’d been confronted with too much of the torturous experimentation. Shado wouldn’t have stood for it and neither would he. Slade would have convinced them to wait until they had their bearings before they challenged the captain and attempted to commandeer the ship and crew. Once they got to a port, Oliver and Sara would have been able to contact their families in Starling and go _home_. And Slade – over the years, the story in his mind changed. Sometimes, he and Slade would part ways forever. Sometimes, they’d keep in contact on occasion. Sometimes, Slade would be with him. His fantasies tended to start with drinks on a rooftop with a view and end with bedsheets they had not felt beneath them in far too many months.

Pulling off the rest of his uniform and tugging on a pair of sweats to sleep in, he turned his attention to the last few days. He’d spent a good four years getting over and trying to forget Slade. Having him back, as a madman bent on ruining his life, he had spiraled though the full spectrum of anger and guilt and sorrow. He hadn’t bothered hide those emotions from anyone, not explicitly. But this was the first time he was truly taking an evening for himself to process the deepest-buried of his emotions: lust. A part of him still remembered how Slade had made him feel, what desires the older man had awakened. He had hurt his friends and stood as the shadow of a threat to his family, but a part of Oliver still felt something for the man he had once cared for so deeply.

“The years you spent living as something other than a socialite pretty-boy have been good to you.”

Before Oliver could turn around, he found a pair of Kevlar-encased arms around his waist and a familiar pair of lips against one of his ears. It figured that the one time he would allow himself to think of forbidden things, their subject would appear.

“I’ve taken some time to get to know the women in your life. It amuses me that only one comes close to truly understanding you.”

The Mirakuru made Slade’s grip impossible to break. Oliver’s first instinct was to try to spin around and lash out, but he was locked in place, the mercenary’s solid presence right up against his bare back. And a part of him was not resisting the forced embrace as hard as it should.

“It’s unfair to come after an unarmed man,” he said instead, willing himself to stay calm. “You taught me that. It’s dishonorable and unsatisfying, that’s what you said.”

Instead of crushing him closer, Slade traced one gloved hand up along Oliver’s torso to his sternum, resting his palm right over his heart. It was as much a declaration that he had not come for a fight as anything else. The touch seared a precise trail along his skin, and it was hard not to think of how much more it would burn if those fingers were uncovered.

“There’s advantage in sneaking up on an unarmed man for a talk,” the old soldier murmured, finally releasing his captive in favor of turning him around so they could face each other.

Slade was maskless, the orange-and-black upgrade of his old Deathstroke helmet resting on the table right over Oliver’s Arrow uniform. The formidable katana he generally strapped to his back was on the table as well. He stood before Oliver now as an in-between of the man he had been and the man he had become.

“Like the talk you had with Sara earlier tonight?” the younger man asked, refusing to take a step back. He would show Slade no vulnerability. Not this time.

“It was long over-due,” came the response. “And given your reaction, your protégé didn’t harm her too much, after all.”

“Neither of them deserved what you did,” Oliver said, heart racing and hands balling into fists. “Them or Thea and Laurel. I’m the one you came here for.”

It was jarring to actually hear Slade chuckle. “Your sister is a spitfire, but she’s harmless, as is your mother. Sara simply needed a reminder of our history – and what it means to cross me. As for Assistant District Attorney Laurel Lance… You cannot begrudge me for feeling a certain curiosity about the woman whose photo you carried throughout our time together on the island.”

It was a low blow. In their time on the island, Slade had not once brought up the photo’s less and less frequent appearances in his hands. Oliver grabbed at the ammo belt across Slade’s chest, tugging as hard as he could. It was a natural reaction of a time long past and he wasn’t discouraged by the immovable steel of the other man’s body.

“I know about the bio-transfuser and about Isabel Rochev,” he hissed. “Roy and Sara are safely out of your clutches and I _will_ kill you if you lay a finger on anyone I care about again.”

“Here we are again, with your choices,” Slade rasped back, taking hold of Oliver’s chin. “I admire your little pupil’s tenacity, but the rest, I could not care about any less.”

It was unbearable, being so close to him. The memory of the kiss they’d shared the other night was as fresh in his mind as it had been when it had transpired. Despite what had happened since then, nothing had dimmed it. Self-loathing twisted hard and fast in Oliver’s gut.

“So what _do_ you care about?” he asked quietly, willing his body to stay still, not to tremble, not to give away anything but his rage. “What do you _want_?”

“The same thing I have wanted since the last time I looked upon you with two eyes instead of one.” Slade had shifted forward, pressing his lips along the side of Oliver’s face, trailing the words from cheek to ear. “Oliver Queen must suffer…and then he must disappear forever.”

They ended up against the metal partition walls encircling Oliver’s cot. The vigilante had his nemesis pinned up against the steel, keenly aware he was only able to do that because Slade allowed it. They were practically breathing each other’s air, staring so closely at each other that Oliver was finding it jarring to look at the material of the black patch and know what was _not_ beneath it. He pressed his elbow against Slade’s throat, regardless of how useless the move truly was.

“Not going to happen.”

No sooner had he said that than they were wrestling, wrapped in a facsimile of wrestling as Slade lifted him up in the air by the hips and they went toppling to the floor. Shirtless, precious little protecting his skin from assault, Oliver still struggled to pin Slade beneath him. The Mirakuru made every grasp at his arms or sides hurt a hundredfold like a vice and his head knocked against the floor when they rolled in a reversal. Click-clack, Slade’s ammo belt came off and slid harmlessly to the floor, soon followed by the gear belt at his waist.

What were they doing? Was it the culmination of days of sudden exposure after years of separation? Was it a longing exacerbated by time and distance, with only the deepest of fantasies as balm?

Oliver couldn’t look away. He was angry and confused but his hands moved of their own accord. He wanted to disarm Slade, get out from underneath him and bolt for his quiver and the tranquilizer arrows secured in it. Instead, he found himself arching into the touch of glove-freed hands, feeling each and every callus on the fingers pressing firm over his ribs and shoulders and hips. He yanked at the fastenings on Slade’s Kevlar vest himself. The anger was spilling over and mixing with his desires. Every ache and bruise from the last two days burned with renewed pain but it only drove him onwards. He was right here, not going anywhere. And if he was going to suffer anything further, he wasn’t going to do it alone. His head throbbed painfully as he pulled down the zippers on Slade’s enforced jacket and yanked it down to his elbows. He couldn’t wound the other man without an actual weapon, but he trapped him in the arm fastenings of his own clothes, forcing his whole weight up and to the side so he could straddle his one-time mentor and pin his arms behind him.

They weren’t speaking anymore, but he pressed an elbow to Slade’s throat again anyway and reached down with his free hand to the swell at his crotch. One tight squeeze and he found the other man arching in reaction. As he searched with his eyes for a weapon, he brushed between his own thighs by accident and bit back a groan when he felt his own growing arousal.

“You still can’t plan a good distraction,” Slade growled, dragging his teeth along the side of Oliver’s throat.

Somehow they were standing again, grinding against each other as Oliver backed them towards the cot. A cruel ripping sound announced the renewed freedom of Slade’s hands. He took hold of Oliver’s throat and squeezed in warning. With his other hand, he took Oliver’s wrist and tugged it away from his crotch, using it instead to press down against that of its owner. He began kneading Oliver through the fabric of his sweatpants and the younger man was completely hard within moments. In retaliation, Oliver bent one knee slightly, angling it so he could rub right against Slade’s own trapped erection.

Closer and closer their faces shifted, noses brushing, and then the barely-there whisper of lips grazing lips. A replay of their last kiss flashed in the shared gazes of their eyes.

CRASH!

A loud noise from the main floor of the club made them freeze. Their interlude was over.

“Think about what I said, kid. The fate of this city is of no consequence to me.”

Slade shoved away from him and made for the stairs, picking up his blades and helmet on the way. A dazed Oliver tugged on a half-crumpled shirt and grabbed an empty messenger bag from under his cot to cover the front of his pants. He needed to make sure that no one had gotten hurt – or would be hurt any time soon.

If he focused on that, he wouldn’t have to keep thinking about what he had just done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love a good dialogue, but just _so many people_ had to have their say in here!
> 
> Laurel has been in particular hard to write here. I've been sorting out the rollercoaster her personality and views have taken all the way from Season 1 to 4, and where I'm writing her into, it's a delicate place. She's paranoid and suspicious because of the debacle with Alderman Blood, which I _will_ touch on again eventually, but now she's gotten more truths about her ex-boyfriend than she had to handle at this point in the original version of the series. No jailed Quentin to tell her what the Arrow needs to represent for the city, so she's taking this more personally - which is a good and bad thing, in this case.
> 
> Any guess who was the cock-block in this scenario? Come on! You guys have been pretty quiet, but I know you're there, and I'd love to hear your speculations.
> 
> Till next time!


	9. Chapter 9

Past the coded door to the main floor of Verdant, Oliver counted two voices loud enough to reach his ears. Neither one was Slade’s. Less concerned now about an ongoing attack, he slowed down. What had happened between his former – friend – and himself ghosted across his skin and echoed through each one of his suddenly-hyperaware senses, but he had not forgotten exactly what, exactly how dangerous, Slade had become.

“…and we’re all worried about you.” John’s voice finally became clear as Oliver rounded the corner from what the club staff knew was the defunct stockroom. The bodyguard was standing with Thea by the bar, holding a bottle of vodka just out of her reach. Between them was a group of fallen barstools, the source of the loud cra that had reached the secret basement earlier.

“This is _my_ club – where I can have a shot or two if I think I need it,” the girl replied, grabbing at another bottle instead, twisting it open and going for a glass.

“That depends on whether you can find a better way to make yourself feel better,” Oliver called out, stepping into the lights where they both could see him. He started righting the chairs, hoping that he didn’t look roughed-up enough for either of them to start asking questions.

“Guess this is the place where Queens go when they can’t stop thinking, huh?” Thea smiled, cocking her head to beckon him over for a drink. “You’ll have to teach me how to lose a guard detail like you did last year, though.” She winked at John to let him know it wasn’t really personal.

“I’m going to guess someone got herself discharged a little earlier than planned.” Oliver frowned down at the glass in his sister’s hand, noting her jeans and the modest top she wore.

With a snort, Thea raised her makeshift drink in a sort of salute. “The bag of clothes Mom left was probably for tomorrow, but what’s a few hours between then and now? The staff wasn’t really watching me after they dimmed the curfew lights. I just…didn’t feel like heading home. Digg found me on the way here and insisted on keeping me company.”

“It’s not exactly safe to wander the Glades alone at this hour,” John said, shifting to look around. “With Sara keeping the club shut for the night––!”

His gun was suddenly in his hands, pointed at the shadows, and he was angling to put himself between the Queen siblings and danger. Oliver tugged Thea behind him and turned in time to see Slade walking out of the shadows, dressed in a pair of dark-wash jeans and a snug-fitting gray t-shirt, a charcoal jacket over one shoulder.

“It’s good to know that Oliver’s got someone vigilant watching over you, Ms. Queen,” he drawled, a faint smile on his lips as Thea herself nudged John into putting away his gun.

The secret vigilante placed himself firmly between Slade and the rest of the room. He wasn’t sure what the older man’s angle was now, dressed like something straight out of his dreams and his closest-kept fantasies.

“I thought you’d already left,” he said, more for the benefit of their companions than for himself. Given the lack of visible weapons, anything could happen.

“I forgot my jacket,” the mercenary replied. “I didn’t think I’d get a gun pointed in my face if I came back for it.”

“Mr. Wilson! So this is where you ended up looking for my brother,” Thea cut in before Oliver could snap out a response. Deliberately, she let her eyes trail up and down Slade’s body with open admiration. “You even dressed for it, too. This wasn’t what you had on at the hospital.”

“One should tailor one’s attire to the occasion,” Slade replied, smiling slightly. He shifted back, a hand in one of his pockets. It had the effect of highlighting the broadness of his chest in the decidedly casual shirt.

“The better for you to come to an agreement?”

Several things dawned on Oliver at once. She’d been _sizing Slade_ _up_ , Slade who was dressed like he’d just come from a _meeting_ in an empty, temporarily closed-down night club. And he’d apparently had that meeting with Oliver, who was not only haphazardly dressed, but very likely inadvertently displaying the bruising on his neck that Isabel had remarked could lead to certain presumptions.

“Not quite,” he tried to find his bearings, thankful that the former soldier hadn’t tried to place a hand on his shoulder or something. “And Mr. Wilson was just leaving.”

He stared Slade straight in the eye, willing him to cooperate. Whatever his angle was, appearing in front of Thea and John like this, it wasn’t something Oliver was going to tolerate. Everything that the Arrow had guessed about Deathstroke’s plans had been thrown into question and this new twist could only mean something worse for the city – or the people that he cared for, in particular.

“We’ll continue this another time,” Slade said after a few moments. His gaze traveled smoothly from brother to sister a he shrugged on his jacket. “Have a good evening, Ms. Queen.”

Partly to keep an eye on him, partly to stall so he wouldn’t have to answer his sister’s questions right then, Oliver escorted the mercenary out the club’s side entrance to the very same alleyway where Thea had been knocked unconscious and Roy had been kidnapped. Half in the shadows, a black Honda NC700X leaned against the wall right beside his Ducati Diavel. The long case strapped to the back of the new bike’s seat most certainly housed Deathstroke’s katanas.

“Just what were you playing at in there?” he demanded, blocking Slade’s way.

The super-solider wasn’t fazed, tugging him even closer by the nape of his neck just as he’d used to do on the island. “Figure it out, kid. I’ve had five years to make my plans. And we both know you were always a little slow on the uptake.”

“I’m not the same _kid_ you taught on the island,” the vigilante hissed, fisting a hand in Slade’s shirt. He hated how his _voice_ , uncertain and rough, contradicted the words he was trying to force out. “This isn’t a training exercise. You can’t hold an entire city responsible for my choices.”

“I can force you to make smarter ones,” came the reply, barely a whisper that trailed from his ear to the corner of his mouth. “Call that a new lesson, if you want.”

It was a flashback to their life on the island all over again, leaving Oliver to fight the tremors of want creeping along his arms and spine to his groin. Slade slid past him and onto his bike, pulling on a helmet before his former student could regain his equilibrium. He maneuvered his way easily out of the alley and disappeared onto the streets of the Glades.

“I guess Mom was wrong about your problem with Mr. Wilson,” Thea’s teasing voice sing-sang in the air. She was standing just outside the small side door, outright reassessing everything she knew about him. “Or should we all be calling him Slade now?”

This was a scenario that Oliver hadn’t ever planned on. He stared at his teen sister, not sure – or maybe just not willing to be certain – of what to say. He tensed even further when he saw John standing in the doorway behind her, just far enough inside to be partly hidden by the shadows. It didn’t help matters that he could hear Felicity’s voice in the back of his mind, reminding him how terrible he was at making excuses when it counted.

“It’s complicated,” he settled on in the end. He strode past them both and into the club, avoiding their gazes.

“We have a whole car ride for you to give me the important details,” Thea said. “I agreed to let Digg drive me back home, and with Mom staying at a hotel so she can be closer to the campaign office for an early morning meeting, you can sleep in your own bed tonight.”

Oliver took that opportunity to steal a glance at John. He was calm and collected as ever, though a certain grimness flashed through his eyes and his lips were stretched just a little bit thinner than usual to mark his displeasure. They wouldn’t be able to speak openly with Thea in the car, but that didn’t mean that John wasn’t going to read in between the lines of everything he would have to tell Thea.

“It’s a long ride back to the mansion,” the bodyguard remarked pointedly as Thea gathered her purse and finished the last of her drink at the bar.

“Could be shorter.” Oliver tried not to wince awkwardly when his sister finally walked back to them. She had a look in her eyes that said she was getting answers. “Definitely shorter.”

Not two minutes into the car ride, Thea began her interrogation. “I always thought you were just experimenting, back when you were in college, you know? You were with Laurel most of that time, but there were rumors of you with other girls at clubs. A few friends swore they saw you with guys sometimes, pants down, but we didn’t really think much of it beyond you being way drunker or higher than you planned for that evening.”

“I stopped doing – that – before things got really serious with Laurel,” he replied, eyes focused on the street outside. Before the commitment issues had come in and he’d started fooling around with Sara in secret, he didn’t add aloud.

“Still, I didn’t think Mr. Wilson was your type.” Blunt force trauma was the only description for Thea’s next assault. “Rich gentleman in a suit, really impressively built, and that bike is clearly along the lines of the one you like driving around… So, when are you telling Mom that you’re dating one of her sponsors?”

The car jerked ever so vaguely to the right and Oliver caught John’s pained expression in the rearview mirror. Both of them would rather face down half the inmates in Iron Heights than be present for this conversation. A detached little voice in the back of Oliver’s head told him that it was still better to have Thea focus on this and not on Roy or her accidental drugging – even if it was at his expense.

“We’re _not_ dating,” he snapped aloud, turning wide eyes on his sister.

“So what _are_ you doing?” Thea persisted, leaning towards him with a wicked little grin. “I _saw_ the tension between the two of you in that alley! Maybe if Digg and I hadn’t shown up, there’d be questionable things to bleach off the dancefloor.”

“That is not something anyone wants to hear from their little sister!” Oliver yelped, firmly shoving her to the other side of the seat. He could never let Thea find out how close she had come to guessing the truth. Slade had been more familiar to him tonight than the man he’d had lunch with less than 72 hours ago. The soldier had even seemed sane again. And that thought alone came close to driving him mad.

“We have history,” he found himself explaining after a few moments had gone by. “Too much of it went from good to bad very fast. I made some mistakes, he made some mistakes – and we both overreacted. Now every conversation we have is double-edged and it feels like we’re never going to come to an understanding that leaves everyone involved safe.”

He hadn’t meant to say that much, aware that John was listening quietly in the driver’s seat, but now that he had spoken, he was surprised to find some of the weight on his shoulders had lifted. He would have laughed at the irony of that had he not caught the moment Thea’s expression grew pensive.

“Hey, was it something I said…?”

His sister wore guilt and worry like a shroud. “One of the last things Roy told me before he – before he was kidnapped – was that maybe you _had_ met Slade sometime in the years you were gone. I followed him into the alley when those men took him.” Biting her lips, she turned to pleading. “Isn’t there a way to pressure the police into searching harder? Last time someone took him, the Arrow came. It might not happen this time.”

One secret had unwittingly been brought out into the open but there were several more interlocking pieces Oliver had to keep her far away from.

“He’ll turn up soon,” he said, sliding an arm around her shoulders to pull her back against him. “Roy’s resourceful. Whatever happens, he’ll come out of this safe and sound.”

The rest of the ride, they lapsed into silence. Eventually, Thea fell into a doze, her head lolling softly against his shoulder. While it was healthy for her to focus on Roy being able to take care of himself, it would be better for everyone if the boy were cured before he turned up at the SCPD and spun a tale about escaping his captors. Slade’s plans had so many layers and overlapping parts to it that Oliver simply wanted to keep his family and friends as far from danger as possible. Laurel already knew too much. Sin already knew too much. Now John had likely pieced together the one thing about this entire mess that Oliver had wanted hidden away for good. It was only a matter of time before word got to Felicity. He needed to figure out how far Slade’s web of influence really extended. Isabel in Queen Consolidated was already a big problem, but he hadn’t made it secret that he had other business contacts in the city. Did the shadow he cast extend to City Hall? Some elements in the police department?

 _Figure it out, kid._ The words echoed maliciously in his mind.

“Oliver, we’re here.” John’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. As they parked in front of the Queens’ manor, his eyes were focused steadily on his friend’s reflection.

Waking Thea and directing her halfway up the stairs to the second floor was the last stalling tactic Oliver could manage. He found John waiting for him patiently in the smallest drawing room, just to the side of the entrance hall. He stood formally, like a normal bodyguard would, but his lips were pursed in a definitive line of disappointment.

“Maybe we should have stayed in Verdant for this,” Oliver said, going towards the side table where a few decanters of brandy and whiskey waited with glasses and a half-filled ice-bucket. “I think there’s still some vodka in – well, somewhere.”

“Felicity really called it,” John deadpanned, shaking his head. He stared at Oliver, watched him pouring drinks, as though he were seeing him for the very first time. “You and Slade – I never would have guessed, but she was spinning tales the minute she started watching the video feed from that restaurant. I don’t even want to know what happened after you turned off your earpiece the other night!”

Handing his friend one of the whiskey glasses, the vigilante smiled ruefully. “I wasn’t lying when told you that Slade played a big role in shaping who I am today. I just couldn’t bury everything away after I thought he’d sunk to the bottom of the sea.”

“When you first said who we were up against, I thought we were dealing with a guy with a grudge.” Swallowing down a large gulp of his drink, John smiled humorlessly. “We’d have prepared better if you’d told us that the guy’s your ex.”

“He was never my––” Oliver cut himself off mid-protest. Leaning on the side of the couch and finishing off his own drink in one go, he rubbed at his temples. He hadn’t ever really thought of Slade the way John described him, as a former boyfriend. He had always just been Slade. “It doesn’t matter. What we had between us ended on the Amazo and he’s even more determined to kill me than he was then. He wants me to suffer and then he wants me to die.”

“You’re starting to sound resigned,” John pointed out.

It was Oliver’s turn to smile without mirth. “I made my mistake five years ago. If it has to be my life for this city, then that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

***

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_Everything made sense now and everything didn’t at the same time, Sara thought as she shifted on the old crate by the entrance of the fuselage._

_Slade Wilson had risen from the dead – or, more likely, simply pulled back from the edge of dying thanks to the Mirakuru. She’d watched him nearly rip five mercenaries limb from limb. She’d seen the bloodlust in his eyes. And she’d all but felt the hellfire of emotions piled on top of emotions he projected when he’d finally gotten to a staggering Oliver and pulled him into a_ kiss.

 _Now it was night, hours after what couldn’t be called anything less than a massacre, and she was still trying to process how the day had gone. She was torn between the fear and terror of running for her life and staring at the possibility of death in the black void of a pistol barrel, and the shock and surprise of seeing Oliver with a man, an_ older _man as far from the models and frat boys and sorority girls, as far from Laurel as could possibly_ exist _. She could still see them standing together, clutching at each other, torn between grief for Shado and relief to still be alive – the air charged between them a tenfold more than when they’d made their teary, pained farewells in the submarine corridor._

_“Ivo had too many men,” Oliver had gasped over and over, holding tight to the front of Slade’s BDU in between rough kisses, uncaring of the blood and grime, of the corpses on the ground, of Sara standing awkwardly by a tree, unable to decide if she should keep staring at them or try and chase down Anthony herself._

_“We’ll make him pay, kid, I promise.” The grows from Slade’s throat had been more animal than human as he’d gripped the other man almost too tight by the arms, holding him in place in their bizarrely hungry and comforting embrace. He held and kissed and touched with a fierceness that no one could mistakenly consider painless._

_Sara had never been gladder to have lied for Oliver’s sake than she had been right then. The half-crazed intensity in their companion’s gaze, the way he barely controlled his new amplified strength, was frightening. Almost as frightening as how Oliver simply took it, hiding his winces in devouring kisses and focusing on matching him with pure post-skirmish adrenalin._

_Her thoughts scattered when the bushes shifted a few meters from her left. She dove for her handgun and raised it without first checking who was there._

_“Hey, it’s just us,” Oliver said, appearing in the clearing with Slade at his side. “We noticed fresh deer tracks near the grave site and tried to find the herd. Lost track of time.”_

_After the three of them had buried Shado, some new measures had to be put in place to keep Ivo’s mercenaries from surprising them again. More familiar with the island, the men had gone to scout the surrounding area while Sara monitored transmissions from the Amazo or other possible nearby vessels. She knew that it was a lot of trust she had been given, but she wouldn’t betray them._

_“Thanks again,” her friend said, settling down beside her as Slade went inside for weapons inventory. He looked more worn-out than ever, but happiness and grief warred in his eyes. “It didn’t feel right, not seeing Shado one last time today while we checked the perimeter. Especially with Slade and – everything happened so fast…”_

_“He’s not stable,” Sara whispered, keeping her voice as low as possible, just in case everything Anthony had ever told her about the Mirakuru’s sensory enhancing properties was true. “There’s no telling what will happen if he knows that Ivo made you choose who to save.”_

_“I never chose!” Oliver hissed, rounding on her, trying to hold back what he was feeling in favor of keeping his voice down. “Ivo did that for me. And Slade – he’s dealing with this just like I am. Shado meant a lot to both of us.”_

_“And that’s why you can’t tell him the whole story!”_

_For a moment, she thought she had gotten through to him, had made him realize the danger they could be in. But that wasn’t what he focused on._

_“He nearly died,” Oliver said. “I’m not going to do anything to cause him any more pain.”_

_Inside the fuselage, Sara had been given Shado’s old bedroll out of practicality, positioned in a snug little corner of their hideaway. She didn’t need to ask why the men had theirs bundled together at the opposite end of the shelter. Oliver headed straight to where Slade was cleaning and checking weapons, hunching down to help him. From her beddings, she could hear snippets of their conversation: Slade’s barely-controlled need for revenge warred with Oliver’s desire for just a little more time to recover from what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. The more they talked, the closer they shifted towards each other. As Slade slung an arm around his shoulders and Oliver simply relaxed into the touch, it became more and more uncomfortable to watch. The older man’s death and resurrection had shredded whatever veil of platonic camaraderie they’d been trying to maintain in front of her before they’d found the submarine. They existed in a little bubble of their own, born of shared grief and anger and the pure pleasure of simply being alive and together for another day._

_And yet, as she watched them check the camouflaging tarp over the smaller holes in the ceiling and retreat to lie together on their shared beddings, she couldn’t help but feel that the other shoe was about to drop – painfully._

***

“So is this cynical brooding a Lian Yu survivor thing? Because Digg and I went there to get Oliver a few months ago and I nearly got killed by a land mine – and I would have been, if Oliver hadn’t swung down from a tree like some sort of modern-day Tarzan and saved me – but I didn’t turn into a silent paranoid pessimist.

A few weeks ago, Felicity’s endless nervous babbling would have made Sara snap, but she had finally gotten used to it. She even found it a little funny at times. Stepping off the inter-city train and onto the platform at Central City’s Grand Station wasn’t one of those times. After two hours of keeping an eye on the other passengers to be sure none of Slade’s enhanced thugs had followed them, she just wanted a cup of coffee before they headed to STAR Labs to find Dr. Snow and her colleague.

“I don’t know about Ollie, but I learned nearly everything I know in Nanda Parbat,” she said, half-teasing as they made their way down along the platform to the station lobby.

“Right, assassin camp,” the hacker winced. “Can’t believe I nearly forgot about that.

It was still before noon and not too many people loitered around the inter-city tracks. Even the station lobby wasn’t crowded, as though bracing for the lunch rush to come. Central City seemed lighter than Starling City somehow; maybe it was because the buildings looked newer or because a catastrophe as bad as that which had affected the Glades had not occurred, but it was easier for Sara to breathe here. That somehow set her on edge.

“I sent a message to Caitlin and Cisco and they’re willing to meet us later this afternoon, around 3 o’clock,” her companion said, tapping away on her smart phone as they walked out the revolving doors. “They’re doing tests on Barry most of today so our original lunch plans are getting pushed back.”

“Coffee and food first it is, then,” Sara decided, pulling on a pair of shades and quietly surveying the people around them. “Know anywhere good here? I haven’t been in this city in _years_.”

“Well, Big Belly Burger’s the same everywhere you go, but if it’s coffee you want, we can head to Jitters.” Felicity took charge, leading the way down the sidewalk. “It’s a good thing that the crazy stuff tends to happen in Starling after dark. We can catch the 6PM train and be back in time for, well, evening duties. And in the meantime, I can convince you to tell me a bit more about Oliver’s history with You-Know-Who.”

Staring at her incredulously, Sara laughed. She had warned Oliver that the rest of the team wasn’t stupid. “Harry Potter references? Where’s this coming from?”

“Oliver’s never been king of honesty,” the other woman replied as they rounded the corner. “But something’s really starting to bug me about the whole Slade-has-a-vendetta-against-me angle he has us working with. You hear a lot of things while monitoring the comms and when you raided Slade’s apartment the other night, I caught a bit of what he was saying to _you_.”

“Slade and I never got along on Lian Yu,” Sara admitted blandly. “In between the drug and losing Shado, there wasn’t really enough time to get to know each other. By the time he went completely crazy, you know how that turned out.”

Living with the League of Assassins, Sara had had a healthy dose of paranoia beaten into her. Something was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. She was tense enough that she nearly missed Felicity nudging her on the shoulder and half-shifted into a stance to throw her onto the floor without thinking.

“Hey, easy there!” the hacker yelped, raising her hands a bit in a show of surrender. “I was _just_ going to point out that Jitters is the other way. Away from where you were creepily staring through those shades that you shouldn’t look so obviously creepy staring through.”

“Don’t sneak up on me again,” Sara just said, taking off the shades to give the other woman a stern look. “And keep your eyes peeled. It’s feels a little too peaceful right now.”

***

“Again!”

It wasn’t that Oliver didn’t think Roy had recovered. The Mirakuru in his system had made sure the teen would bounce back quickly after a good night’s rest. He was a little more withdrawn than before, but it didn’t affect his focus on the mats as they trained. If anything, he seemed a little _too_ absorbed in their training.

They had returned to Kali to better gauge Roy’s control of his super-strength. Ordinarily, stick training focused on attacking and disarming an opponent quickly without actually getting too close. In the case of his protégé, the goal was _not_ to break either of his own sticks or Oliver’s. So far, only one lay discarded on the floor and it wasn’t Roy who was fighting with only one weapon. But he wasn’t anywhere close to winning.

“You need to focus on both looking for an opening and fending off my attacks,” Oliver said, spinning to the side and blocking one of his student’s sticks with his knee. “It can’t just be one or the other. Focus, Roy!”

He didn’t receive any response, only a new combination of strikes that came close to hitting – dislocating – his right shoulder. The sticks whistled through the air in their downward arc and the force behind them was enough to tear into the practice mats. One broke into two splintered halves but Roy didn’t stop to regroup, wheeling around for a second charge without letting go of the now-jagged weapon. His expression hadn’t changed, blank and zeroed in on Oliver without seeming to actually see him.

Once, in his five years away, Oliver had seen a mad wolf. It had been white and gray, with a particular patch of deeply black fur over its right ear. He would never forget its eyes, filled with a fire that would not burn out, too bright to be rational, too unfocused to truly be sane. It had been in a fighting pit, set against large dogs and even a small bear. It had fought one round after the other, without pause, regardless of the blood that dripped from its open wounds onto the dirt floor of the caged area.

The shock on the rabid animal’s face appeared like the one on Roy’s as two Tazer electrodes fastened onto the back of his t-shirt and currents pulsed through his body. John stood just beyond the mats, gripping the electroshock gun with a grim expression on his face. He only turned the power down and off when Roy dropped to one knee and groped shakily for the darts to tug them off his body.

“Hey, you back with us?” Oliver asked carefully, stick still in hand as a precaution. He inched closer to the fallen teen, watching him sink lower on the floor and rest on both hands and knees to regain his bearing.

It took a few moments, but the boy rasped out a response. “…I thought you were someone else…” he admitted.

“Well, that answers the question about electricity possibly slowing him down.” John started reeling the darts back into the gun, stepping onto the mat to study the damage closely.

“The Mirakuru enhances next to all of the body’s healing processes,” Oliver said, helping the boy up. “I’m more concerned about what you’re seeing. Who was it this time, Roy?”

They moved off the mats, John to put away the Tazer, Oliver and Roy to take a break by the medical tables. The teen vigilante rubbed his forehead, a move his mentor recognized as one of his own habits when he was strained.

“It’s still Thea,” Roy confessed. “I know it’s not her. I keep reminding myself that the Mirakuru _is_ giving me hallucinations, but – I just get so _angry_.” He rubbed his palms over his face and slumped onto a chair.

“You have to force yourself to remember it’s all in your head,” Oliver pressed, handing him a bottle of water. “Until we hear from Sara or Felicity in Central City, it’s the best we can do unless we keep you sedated full-time. And we need you alert in case sends out his men to cause trouble.”

“I just need to find a way to stop fixating on Thea.” Tossing his bottle from one hand to the other, Roy turned grave eyes on his mentor. “Wilson talked to me a few times. _You’re_ the one he’s fixated on. I don’t know how he’s keeping it together, but every time he mentioned something to do with you, he got that look in his eye… like he was talking to someone else about you. Or to you.”

Oliver exchanged a quick look with John. Roy was already struggling with his troubles with Thea and learning the similarity between his situation and the one between his mentor and Slade would not help him cope any better. John wanted the truth out in the open, but he’d had to agree with Oliver that now was not the right time.

“I’ll stay hidden here until we get that cure,” Roy decided aloud, finishing his drink and going to choose a bow from one of the racks. “If I get out of hand, just shoot me up with that tranquilizer. I’m not putting anyone at risk. I won’t be like Wilson.”

Watching the boy resolutely moving to the makeshift archery range, Oliver frowned. Roy was being practical, but there were other concerns they needed to address. John went to his side, picking up one of the tablets from the nearest workstation.

“I can stay here with him if you want to head out,” he offered. “The calendars Felicity cloned from Isabel’s office computer say she’s got a few out-of-office meetings you could intercept her at.”

That was just one of the problems they had to deal with. Oliver took the tablet, glancing down at the schedule. “No, it’ll take both of us if Roy does need to be restrained. We’re supposed to meet tomorrow morning. She can’t run from me at the office. I’ll find out just how deeply she’s involved in Slade’s plans then.”

***

Lunch at Jitters had been okay. Felicity genuinely liked the place and could easily imagine Barry going there for his morning coffee before heading in to work. She missed him. Maybe when this whole mess with Deathstroke was over, she’d take a weekend off and visit with Caitlin and Cisco again and finally meet that Iris they mentioned kept returning to Barry’s bedside. But all of that wasn’t happening until she got her friends at STAR Labs to work on a Mirakuru cure, and that might not even happen within the day if Sara didn’t stop dragging her around like she thought a whole army of enhanced thugs was on their tail.

“So, was mall-stalking really your thing back before the island?” she finally demanded after they’d clopped onto the escalator up yet another floor in the fourth department store they’d been to since noon.

“I know we’re being followed,” Sara replied instead, keeping her eyes on the bags on a display table up ahead. “I’ve been trying to catch sight of just _who_ it is, but I can’t risk leaving you alone anywhere, not with what’s in your bag.”

Felicity did not need another reminder that it was not a contaminated bottle of Chanel No. 5 in her purse. She bit her bottom lip, taking the beaded clutch that Sara handed her and pretended to inspect it. She hoped she didn’t look as awkward as she had when they’d first started this ruse and Sara had passed her an armload of dresses.

“I thought we were past the whole Felicity-is-fragile thing after our run-in with Clock King?” she asked pointedly.

She wasn’t an assassin and she wasn’t a spy – field agent, operative, or whatever ARGUS called them – and she couldn’t see anything suspicious in a large, sparsely-populated floor of shoes and bags and bored sales attendants. Taking a deep breath, she adjusted her glasses and looked Sara square in the face.

“Use me as bait,” she said. “Just do it. It’s not the first time I’ve been kidnapped by a crazy criminal so we might as well just get this over with so we can get our antidote made in peace.”

As normal an occurrence it had become to be under Oliver’s focused scrutiny, it was a different matter to be the target of Sara’s squinting gaze. A girl could lose her nerve, knowing she was being stared down by a deadly female assassin who had, not four hours before, nearly tossed her over her shoulder on the sidewalk. Almost.

“Fine.” Sara dropped the bag she had been pretending to be interested in and headed back towards the escalators. “I saw a café across the street from this place. I need another coffee run anyway.” She paused just before heading down. “You know, when we get back home, maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for you to join our sparring sessions sometimes.”

Felicity couldn’t stop grinning smugly until she was actually sitting in the fancy little café, nursing a cup of coffee and watching Sara making a show of perusing the pastry display cases. They had about an hour and a half until they were supposed to meet Cisco and Caitlin for dinner and she was starting to get paranoid, twitching every time she heard or saw someone entering through the café doors. She wanted Sara to get back to the table so she had someone to talk to. If she’d had her laptop here, it wouldn’t be so boring, but they hadn’t figured on being away from Starling City long enough for her to miss it. Otherwise, she _could_ have gotten in a few more hours tracking Slade’s movements for Oliver and John while they kept an eye on Roy.

She was so preoccupied with that line of thought that she didn’t notice Sara walking off to the toilets. She didn’t notice someone slip into the vacant seat in front of her.

“And just what is Oliver Queen’s assistant doing wasting company time and money sipping a latter in Central City?”

It was only sheer luck that Felicity didn’t spill her coffee in shock. Isabel Rochev stared at her intently from the other side of the table, chin balanced with mocking delicacy on her fingertips. Roy’s groggy warnings from the night before bounced over and over in her head.

“It’s Ms. Smoak, isn’t it?” Rochev said. She was condescending; there was no second-guessing that particular impression. “Now what has Oliver got you doing all the way here? A personal errand, maybe?”

“Personal,” Felicity parroted back, trying not to squeeze her cup too tight in her hands. “It’s personal. My kind of personal. I mean, I asked for the day off to visit a sick friend. With a friend. I’m not alone. Visiting a friend with a friend. Definitely not alone.”

“Well, I hope you have a few minutes to spare to pick up some documents at our office here to take back with you to Starling City,” the businesswoman – demon corporate spy, a small voice in the back of Felicity’s head supplied alternatively -  said. “I have a few extra meetings here in Central City and I’ll have to stay the night. You can take the documents to Oliver for me, can’t you? It’d be much more convenient than ordering a courier.”

Sara was still in the toilet or hiding wherever a super assassin hid when they were stalking a potential threat. And Isabel Rochev did count as a threat, didn’t she? Her presence here wasn’t just a coincidence, was it? Felicity wasn’t a big believer in coincidences anymore.

She snuck a quick sip of her drink to hide her jitters. The coffee very nearly scalded her tongue.

“Sure.”

***

Stuffy old chairs in smooth silken fabrics with wooden backs carved at least twenty years ago. Wrought iron and copper lamps and crystal chandeliers. Carpets from the Middle East, as intricate as they were tasteful. Polished mirrors fitted into the wall panels, framed in silver and gold, etched roses and lilies along their edges. Extravagant. Luxurious. Utterly impractical.

At least the concrete and stone walls of his office in the building across the street were more sensible. It was easier to install seamless panels for his tactical gear there and each rounded or sharp piece of modern furniture could be turned into an obstacle or a weapon with little difficulty.

Slade stared at the apartment’s newly refurbished living room with ill-disguised contempt. Every last remnant of what he’d described to his assistant as an aborted break-in attempt had been removed or replaced, even the window frames. He’d turned down her suggestions for reinforcing them and didn’t tell her why. Instead, he’d set the girl to paying the workers and sending them on their way, instructing her to let herself out right after. A month ago, she’d tried to seduce her way into his bed and he’d candidly told her that she didn’t interest him in the slightest. He’d caught Shado rolling her eyes at the girl’s naïve stupidity and Oliver had whispered in his ear that he should snap the whore’s neck and bury the body deep where no one would find it. He’d disappointed Oliver when he’d let her walk out his door alive that day and he’d disappointed Oliver every single day he’d continued to do so. Today would be no different.

“When this city’s ash in the ground, I’ll have nothing left, nothing and no one but you, Slade.”

He caught Oliver’s reflection in the window just as the words washed over him. That hair of his was long, just as it had been five years ago on Lian Yu, three weeks of beard growth trying and failing to age his youthful features

The reflection wasn’t really Oliver’s. The Shado who sometimes sat opposite Slade at the dinner table or stood at his side on the rooftop wasn’t really Shado. Shado was long dead, buried beneath dirt and rocks on the island called Purgatory and Oliver was over half a city away, plotting ways to defeat him and lock him away or kill him.

A few days more and it would all be over. He’d stop seeing visions of Shado and Oliver everywhere he looked.

His phone started buzzing in his hand. Sebastian Blood was calling. He’d have to remind the fool to have faith and be patient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was, in my head, "the chapter in which a lot and NOT a lot happens all at once". Trivia: that long first scene was NOT supposed to have gone that way originally. Slade just... took over. And I couldn't resist him.
> 
> Fun part? The next chapter is already in the works. :)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters within one month, not bad at all!
> 
> Things are coming to a head for the Season 2 part of this story and I feel like my brain's in overdrive. Oliver's seriously got a LOT of issues it's hard to wrap around what happens in his angsty little head.

“I didn’t know you’d be in Central City today.” 

Felicity stood opposite Oliver’s co-CEO in an elevator car heading up to the 43rd floor of one of the newer buildings in Central City, several blocks from the café where she’d last seen Sara. They were passing the 20th floor just then and she was getting really antsy. Going up to floors rented by the company she worked for was not as comforting as it should be.

“I mean, your assistants didn’t exactly say anything when I timed in at the main office this morning,” she continued, both to fish for answers and to distract herself.

“I wasn’t aware that you and my staff were friendly,” Isabel replied, looking her up and down with a condescending little half-smile. “With how often you and Oliver are out of the office, when _do_ you find the time for gossip in the pantry?”

“It’s _because_ Mr. Queen is so busy that I have to keep myself informed,” Felicity rallied. She’d been bluffing about knowing the details of Isabel’s schedule. She didn’t have any way of checking while she was away from her computers, but she was doing what she could with a little old-fashioned detective work.

“That’s good. Especially since one word from me about his misconduct and the courts will be scheduling that injunction hearing within the day.”

And there was the shark in bloody water again. Felicity felt a chill go up her spine as she fought to keep her eyes on Isabel’s. Here she was, worrying that this was a trap, when Isabel was already dangerous even without her connection to Slade Wilson. She _could_ get Oliver frozen out of his own company if she wanted. Whatever happened here, she needed to watch her mouth. Great.

“I’m not just here to pick up documents for my boss, am I?” she guessed. They’d hit the 39th floor and she had seconds to get the truth out in the open.

Isabel stared at her coolly. The light for the 42nd floor blinked for a moment. “Actually, I came here to pick up something from _you_. I’d offer you a seat so we can discuss things properly, but the company hasn’t quite gotten around to renovating this floor yet.”

On the 43rd floor, the doors slid open. And Felicity found herself alone with the other woman in empty concrete and steel nothingness. She started backing out, hyperaware of each echoing clop of her heeled feet on the barely-smoothened ground. If her blood could turn to ice like it did for the wrights north of the Wall in Game of Thrones, it would be happening right that moment. Except she was sure she wasn’t going to turn into an unfeeling zombie killing machine. Isabel looked like she’d fit that bill much better – minus the zombie part – with the way she matched Felicity step for step, backing the terrified bottled-blonde self into a pillar in the center of the room.

“Crap.”

“You have something that I want in that bag of yours. I can let you go crawling back to Oliver right now if you hand it over.” Like a Siberian tiger padding soundless on the floor, the other woman came closer and closer.

“What did Slade promise you?” Felicity accused. “Money? Revenge for something? You do know he’s half-crazy, don’t you? He’s likely to go overboard if it’s a revenge thing.”

“The vial, Ms. Smoak,” Isabel ignored her. “Give it to me and you leave unharmed.”

“Can’t say the same for you, lady!”

Sara was suddenly there, tossing a steel pipe right at Isabel’s left shoulder and yanking Felicity back in the direction of the elevators and the emergency staircase. It would have been a good distraction, if Isabel had not simply caught the pipe and bent it with one hand.

“Did you think I’d come here unprepared?” she mocked, throwing it back at them.

Felicity dove for the floor and Sara rolled to the side, rushing forward with a longer pipe to use as a weapon. The ex-assassin wasn’t fully recovered from the beating she’d taken the night before and it showed. Against an Isabel apparently powered up by Mirakuru, there was absolutely nothing fair about this fight. In horror, Felicity watched the enhanced woman bear down on Sara, flinging her to the ground near the building windows. The only thing that saved her from crashing right through the glass was the rough column she smacked her shoulder against.

“I’m guessing you’re onboard the crazy train too, doing this,” Felicity got out, backing slowly towards the stairwell entrance.

“Oh, I know _exactly_ what I’m fighting for,” Isabel said. Barely a hair was out of place, her dress wrinkle-free, she took one step after the other without even a wobble. “Just remember, I did give you a chance to hand over the formula yourself.”

Bracing herself, Felicity stood her ground, shoving her purse ineffectually but resolutely behind her back. She could imagine several different scenarios that ranged from her being torn in half, being thrown out a window, being beaten to a bloody pulp, being choked to death, having her neck snapped, and––

“NYSSA, NOW!!!!”

The windows to her left broke inwards and several fat cylindrical objects went crashing into Isabel’s body to propel her through the glass on the opposite side of the building. Felicity jumped back against the wall in fright, and only belatedly realized that the projectiles had been very large old-fashioned gunpowder cannon shells. Bewildered, she looked around for Sara. The Black Canary was struggling to her feet, Nyssa al Ghul acting as her crutch. The room was suddenly filled with black-clad League members.

“She’s not the only one who came prepared,” Sara said, smiling lopsided and cheeky, ignoring what was either a very bad bruise or a partly-dislocated shoulder. “Nyssa brought a jet.”

Costumed vigilantes. Super-strong soldiers back from the dead who injected their super-power serum without discrimination into both escapee criminals and power-hungry CEOs. Regular visits from members of an archaic cult of killers who used weird cannons like they were still state-of-the-art technology. Yes, this was Felicity’s life now.

***

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_Oliver thought that he’d be more cautious and awkward with Sara around. He’d thought that he’d try to downplay what Slade had made him feel. Maybe after he’d finished grieving, he’d tell her everything. But Ivo had captured him and Sara and Shado at once and then everything had gone to hell. And then Shado had been shot and Slade had come back from the edge of death and he was seeing things in a way that he hadn’t thought he would––_

_“Shit!”_

_The harsh bite to his hip bone shocked him, drawing his eyes down to the dark eyes of the man on his knees just by the front of his half-unzipped pants. Slade stared at him with something very close to muted amusement, and he couldn’t help but grin back down at him sheepishly. Propped up against a tree with his shirt bunched up to his collar bone, he still felt wobbly enough to have twisted his fingers in Slade’s hair for support._

_“Pay attention when I’m teaching you something, kid,” Slade rasped, trailing his lips up higher and higher, from navel to chest, leaving sharp bite-marks in his wake. He tugged at one reddened nipple just once, a reminder of exactly how easy it was to torment and sensitize that little nub. It was just one of the several lessons Slade seemed bent on imparting since they’d rolled into the thicket, following Oliver’s latest attempt to prove that he was improving even further as a marksman._

_They were making out again, Oliver rolling his hips right up against Slade’s, heady on the feeling of being alive and well enough to be doing this. The heat grounded him, drew him further out of their mutual grief so he could focus on the present. They were alive, had to stay focused so they could stay alive and maybe find a way off the island on Ivo’s ship. Burying his face in Slade’s neck, he licked along the familiar trail to the little spot behind his ear that the older man claimed felt weird to have teased. He licked and nipped until Slade was twisting his head and forcing his mouth open for vindictive, jaw-tensing open kisses. He let the soldier press him more firmly against the tree and hiked up one of his legs to wrap around his waist. It off-balanced him and he tried to reach out to grab at Slade’s shoulder for support, only to have his wrist slammed back against the tree._

_“Owww… Hey, this isn’t a training exercise,” he winced, trying to get Slade to ease up._

_With a grunt, the other man did let go, only to grab onto the tree trunk and crumble the outer bark layers with his fingers. Oliver’s wrist went from bone-white to flushed red with color that would turn into a dark bruise in a few hours._

_“This takes…getting used to,” Slade sighed, pulling back. He looked down at his hands before carefully curving them around the younger man’s hips. It remained unspoken between them, but he’d left far too many bruises on Oliver’s skin in the last day and a half for either of them to be comfortable. “At least if we run out of ammo, I can always knock out Ivo’s mercenaries with a rock or a tree branch.”_

_The familiar undercurrents of revenge seeped into the ASIS operative’s voice and Oliver fought hard not to give into his guilt. He wanted justice for Shado too, but he was reluctant to jump back in the fight without a plan or the slightest whiff of opportunity, especially since he had lost her but regained Slade in the same day. He wrapped his leg more firmly around his miraculously-revived companion’s waist and reached down between them to palm at his groin._

_“Sara’s monitoring the radio again, in case she hears something we can use,” he murmured in Slade’s ear, trying to time what he hoped were soothing words with the fumbling slide of his hand over the other man’s crotch._

_It worked, to some degree. They forewent further discussion, sinking down to the forest ground in hasty gropes and tangled pants, squeezing at each other and stroking fast and hard to completion. They couldn’t afford more outside the fuselage, out in the open where they had to keep one ear cocked for danger both natural and not. Everywhere Slade’s hands traveled, Oliver felt a trail burning like a brand on his skin. He fought down the winces when either of them bumped or pressed too hard against one of his bruises, tossing his shirt off to the side as he brought Slade closer and closer to orgasm. He was near-fevered, barely coherent as he stroked, the hand around his own length tight like a vice._

_A little later, when they’d hauled themselves to the nearest stream to get cleaned off, he caught a far-off expression on Slade’s face._

_“Everything okay there?” he asked, splashing the soldier on the face. He was prepared to duck and dodge to the side, wet underwear be damned, when retaliation came, but there was nothing._

_Slade just wiped at the water dripping down his chin, blinking. “…Yeah…it would be easier if you felt it as well…”_

_Oliver straightened slowly, about to ask if Slade had misunderstood him. When he was less than a foot away, he wound up in a headlock, wrestled back into the water with admonishments for acting like ‘a little ankle-biter clinging to his nanna’s skirts’. He was sure everything would be fine._

_Of course, when Sara found them half an hour later and demanded to know what Slade had done with the box of Mirakuru, that certainty began to lessen significantly._

***

By late afternoon, Isabel had not yet returned to the office. Oliver was left to wonder if this was in a way payback for all the times that he had been late or simply not turned up to company meetings. As it was, he was starting to feel impatient. He’d left John with Roy and Sin at the new base and gone to Queen Consolidated on his own; restlessness had forced him into a hunt for coffee in the company’s cafeteria and he was finally on his way back up to the CEO’s floor. It was good to have allowed the staff to see him down there like a regular person, but he was anxious for news from Felicity and Sara and didn’t want to end up becoming surly in front of anyone working for him.

The executive floor was strangely eerie with so few people around. He could see one of Isabel’s two assistants at work in the outer room of her office suit. The other one was likely out on a coffee break or some errand, and with Felicity absent from his own allotted office space, he felt vulnerable in what should have been his sanctuary.

“Mr. Queen, sir!”

The assistant in Isabel’s office was hurrying out to meet him. She looked nervous, tottering about in her high heels, and it struck Oliver how _young_ she was. Her halting steps screamed that she wasn’t used to the corporate life yet and Oliver and Isabel likely made a horrible contrasting image of what a business executive should be.

“Your assistant didn’t show up today and Ms. Rochev’s been out since before lunch, so Leeann’s been keeping an eye on your office,” the girl, whose name completely escaped Oliver just then, prattled anxiously. “She’s attending to Mr. Wilson right now. He came in a few minutes ago and said that you two had an appointment? I’m really sorry if it’s blindsiding you, but with Felicity gone and neither of us having access to your schedule––”

“It’s fine,” Oliver stopped her right there. It was all he could do to keep his face straight. “I’ll send Leeann out when Mr. Wilson and I are settled. I doubt it’ll be a long meeting, though.”

When he walked through his waiting room and right into his office, he found Isabel’s second secretary pouring bourbon into a glass at the mini bar for someone who had no right to look as comfortable as he did sitting on the couch.

“And here this lovely girl was saying I might have to wait a full hour before you returned,” Slade said from his seat, sprawling just a bit further instead of getting to his feet. Resplendent in black from head to toe – a silk shirt and tie with a leather-and-wool overcoat, well-cut slacks, and polished shoes – he stared up at the young CEO with just a hint of amusement in his one eye.

“Mr. Queen!” Leeann the assistant bobbed her head and looked from the mini bar to the two men in the room. “I was just fixing Mr. Wilson a drink. Would you like one too or––”

“We’ll manage on our own,” Oliver cut her off, dismissing her with a nod of his head. As soon as she’d left the room, taking the horse-like staccato of her shoes with her, he turned his full attention to his _guest_. “Why are you here?”

He stood his ground several steps from the couch, irritated that holding the higher position didn’t stop Slade from looking like he still had absolute control of the situation. Pressed and dressed like the perfect businessman he was pretending to be, the mercenary just looked at him with a small smirk playing at the corner of his lips. Instead of commenting, he rose to his feet and crossed to the mini bar, topping off the bourbon glass the assistant had abandoned.

“Think I’m planning to gut you in here, kid?” he asked, quirking a brow at Oliver over the rim of his glass.

“After last night, I don’t know what to expect,” the younger man threw back. He didn’t want to get any closer, but he was certain Slade wasn’t going to draw him into a fight right here. Enough people had to know he’d entered the building for this to end quietly. “What the _hell_ were you thinking, setting things up for Thea to think we––”

He didn’t even know how to finish that thought. He knew what conclusion his sister had jumped to and how little he’d actually done to deny it. He hadn’t lied the night before and he hadn’t been able to tell her the truth. He ran a hand over his eyes and sighed. He wanted to loosen his tie to feel more comfortable, but he was more conscious than ever about the still-visible bruises around his throat.

“We didn’t actually do anything,” Slade said. He was suddenly standing right in front of Oliver, drink no longer in hand. “Or at least, we didn’t finish what we started.”

Too close. Focusing on his face, Oliver realized they were less than a foot apart. He fought the instincts that were telling him to step far back out of reach.

“Yesterday was a mistake,” he replied slowly, trying to find clues for Slade’s motive in the other man’s single eye.

“Was it?” The old soldier phrased it more like a demand than a real question. “If that’s what you really think, you won’t mind my making it up to you tonight.”

Oliver’s control finally broke and he did take three steps back. “Yesterday was a mistake,” he repeated. “And it is _not_ going to happen again.”

Slade laughed at him. Husky and as raspy as his speaking voice, the sound pulled at something low in Oliver’s gut. He hated that feeling, knowing how these small things still brought out unwelcome twists in his chest.

“I was talking about buying you dinner,” the mercenary elaborated finally. “You choose the place. Show me this city you fought so desperately to get back to, and maybe I’ll see what makes it so special to you.”

Of all the words to come out of Slade’s mouth, these were ones that Oliver did not expect. It could be a trap, a way for Slade to get him alone and find out ways to hurt him even more before whatever his end game was. Or this might just be his one and only chance to convince Slade that this didn’t need to end in bloodshed. Whatever would happen, whatever battles he would have to fight next, Starling would be neither sacrifice nor collateral damage.

“You’ve been here for weeks, at least,” he said, carefully watching the other man. “You’ve probably made detailed maps of every district by now.”

“I’ve seen the image of Starling City that your economic and tourism boards paint for visitors and investors alike. I’ve seen the remains of the Glades and what type of desperate men wanders the dark alleys at night. I’ve not seen the city that belongs to Oliver Queen.”

Perhaps it was nostalgia that caught up with Oliver just then. He fought the softness that threatened to overtake his expression and clenched against the warmth that pulled at his chest. Slade had so rarely been moved to say anything meaningful unless it was for instructional purposes. Perhaps this was something they’d been torn apart too soon for him to know. Such thought was dangerous. Willing himself to look Slade in the eye, he nodded.

“Fine. Dinner.”

One of the half-formed forbidden daydreams he’d had about Slade over the years was what it could be like to have a normal meal with him, somewhere cozy and casual in the city he’d grown up in. He didn’t dare take him to his favorite branch of Big Belly Burger, not when he couldn’t be sure if Carly had a shift that night; instead, he was taking him to an old pizzeria he’d liked when he’d been a teen. It was close to the Glades, across a small park with a kiddie playground that he’d taken a few girls to on dates when he’d wanted to seem boyishly romantic. He hadn’t been there since his return to Starling City, but it held just the right amount of comfort without being too familiar for any memories to really bother him. Luckily, it wasn’t crowded that night, only three other tables occupied in the warm, somewhat cramped space, and it wasn’t so well-known a place that Oliver would instantly be recognized.

“College fare,” Slade said, looking around once they’d been shown to a booth near the back. His eyebrow rose in amusement above his good eye and a crooked smile flashed across his lips.

“You told me to choose a place,” Oliver replied evenly. He even managed a tight smile. “Steaks aren’t really my thing.”

It wasn’t until after they’d been handed menus and ordered their drinks that he realized the last time he’d been here, he’d come with Laurel and Tommy and a few of their other friends. The pizzas were big enough for two or more people to share, knowledge that made something twist in his gut without explanation. He muttered a beer order which Slade breezily echoed and tried not to notice how the waitress stared at them both. He didn’t even want to imagine what she was thinking.

“Another choice for you, kid,” Slade prompted, setting his menu down on the table. Something danced in his gaze that was familiar and yet difficult to pin-point, something unnerving the longer Oliver looked.

This felt like a test. A part of him wanted to ask sarcastically how the Mirakuru fared against allergies, but he wanted to avoid more unsettling conversation. He scanned the pizza list with his eyes, thinking about the reason he had agreed to the meal. Show Slade the Starling City he knew and maybe gain for it some measure of mercy. He hadn’t been given a guarantee, but he would do what it took to give the city even a marginally higher chance of avoiding another catastrophe like the year before. And if Slade was busy with him, it would keep him from actively scheming; keeping him preoccupied might be the extra distraction that Sara and Felicity needed to get a cure made in Central City in time to stop him for good. If the occasional accidental knocking of their knees under the table didn’t distract Oliver too badly first.

“That’s all you talk about now,” he said, “choices.”

“Shouldn’t I?” Slade replied, accepting their beers from the waitress and passing him one before taking a long sip himself. “Not Four X, but decent for American fare.”

“I don’t recall you making so many jabs at this country when we were stuck on the island.”

“No reason to make you more difficult to live with than you already were back then.”

It would never be the same as it had been on Lian Yu. In all the encounters that they had had in the last few days, he’d seen flashes of what they had once been, but he could never forget what they were now. And yet, it did not stop him from being civil, ordering their meal under Slade’s watchful, still-bemused eye. It did not stop him from sipping at his own beer, staring at Slade right back. Where words would mean nothing, presence and silent companionship did. Oliver had once enjoyed talking _at_ Slade to break that silence, but it had been a long time since then, and he found he could better appreciate the quiet now.

Fate was cruel. Years after he’d lost Slade Wilson, he now realized how much of his schooling he had really retained and taken to build his own new image.

“Why does this place matter to you?”

The words shot straight through Oliver’s musings and he focused on the man across him with careful eyes. Slade had barely shifted in his seat; the only proof he wasn’t a statue was that he’d set down his beer bottle on the table.

“Are we talking about this restaurant or the city in general?” he asked right back. He reminded himself that there were few other patrons tonight, but they were seated far enough from them that the pipe-in music completely obscured their conversation.

“I asked you to show me your city, and you bring me to a pizzeria,” Slade pointed out. “This place must mean something to you.”

“I haven’t been back here since before I gave university a try,” Oliver said honestly. “It’s in a good neighborhood and the family that owns it hasn’t changed much of the décor – or the menu – since then. Despite the Undertaking last year, this place has survived, thrived, and stayed the same.”

“Not quite like yourself,” Slade pointed out without missing a beat. “Your own personal Undertaking lasted five years, and you’ve come a long way from the boy who stumbled into my hidden camp. Your nostalgic feelings over a mom-and-pop pizza place aside.”

Oliver snorted, shaking his head. He hadn’t expected to laugh as he had and, in his surprise, he did try and fight it. “It’s a reminder that this city is full of innocent people with lives to live, and it’s them that I am fighting for.”

“This city is important to you because you feel you have to save it.” No sneer touched Slade’s face, but if he respected Oliver’s decisions at all, that respect was distorted by the beginning of that too-familiar detached emptiness in his eyes that meant he was beginning to see things again.

“You made your promise to me, not to this city,” Oliver pressed, reaching out on impulse for Slade’s forearm to ground him in the present. He squeezed as tightly as he dared, searching for the return of controlled sanity. “You blame me for what happened. We’ll fight until one of us stops breathing, if that’s what you want. But Starling City doesn’t have to pay the price of my choices for me.”

He thought that he hadn’t gotten through to him, but Slade’s wrist twisted and suddenly he was gripping back in a too-tight grip of his own.

“Is that how you will choose this time? Tell the truth to my face and be brave in the face of what’s to come, instead of hiding in lies like the cowardly boy you were?”

Never had Oliver seen such an intense expression on Slade’s face before. He wasn’t sure he’d driven off the hallucinations, but the insistence in the other man’s tone told him that this was an important question at the same time. It was suffocating, looking back at him and hoping that no one noticed what was happening in that little back booth.

Insistent buzzing from his jacket pocket broke the moment.  
  
“Better get that,” Slade said, letting go of his arm. 

Oliver wouldn’t let him know how painfully it throbbed. Warily, he did pull out his phone, finding both a missed call and a message from John.

_Sara n Felicity back. Had run-in with Isabel but safe._

He’d been played, beaten and outmaneuvered at his own game. Carefully schooling his expression blank, he put the phone face-down on the table and looked at his dinner-mate again.

“I can hear your heart racing,” Slade said. He sat leaning back in his chair, that unnervingly steady expression on his face.

“It’s my mom. I need to step out to call her.”

He strode out the door without waiting for a response, ducking into the alley by the pizzeria before he got his phone out again. He remembered Slade’s heightened senses and had to take precautions to be sure he wasn’t within his hearing range.

John answered after one ring, bypassing a greeting. “Oliver! Where are you right now?”

“I’m by the park south of the Glades,” he replied. “What happened in Central City?”

“The girls are fine.” Now that he could focus, it didn’t sound like John was any more worried than usual. “I’ll explain later but the important thing is that Sara struck some sort of deal with Nyssa somehow and she and some League members helped them escape Isabel.”

“And the vial?” Oliver looked around, conscious that there was a chance that Slade could have followed him outside to listen in. “Did they do what they went there to do?”

“They left it at STAR Labs,” John confirmed. “Cisco and Caitlin said they’d get back to us by tomorrow afternoon at latest.”

“Is everyone at the base?” he asked, shifting a little further into the darkened space. Looking down at his watch, he figured he could make his excuses to Slade, get a cab to drop him off at Verdant, and take his bike from there to their new base in about half an hour.

“Roy stepped out with Sin to grab food, but they should be back soon. I can have Felicity triangulate your location so I can come pick you up.”

“I can get there myself,” Oliver countered quickly. “Give me half an hour. You can fill me in about what happened then.” He didn’t know if John and Felicity had had time to speak in private by now, but he wanted to avoid the extra complication of being found in Slade’s company.

Ending the call, he stared down at the phone in his hand. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go back inside just yet, even if it was to make his excuses. The conversation he’d been having with Slade could have gone in only so many ways. And he still had no clear answer about what the older man wanted from him. He turned around and froze, finding Slade standing right in front of him.

He needed only look at his face to know that he had heard the entire call.

“You wanted me distracted!”

Slade stared at him implacably, silently blocking the head of the alleyway. “I asked you to dinner to learn what you see in this place that made you return.”

“You’re telling me that you had nothing to do with the attack on my friends? That you had no other plan for this evening but to _talk_?”

He’d been walking closer and closer as he’d spoken. He finished speaking with barely a hand-span between them.

“I never sent anyone to Central City,” Slade said steadily, denying the first accusation. “But you’re right. I do have another reason for asking to meet you tonight.”

Before Oliver could ask anything further, he caught a flash of something metal to his left. He raised his arm just in time to catch Slade’s knife just below his elbow. The blade slashed right through sleeve and skin both, blood welling up from the wound. Before he could yell or demand to know what was happening, Slade clapped a hand over his mouth and whispered into his ear.

“It’s time for the next step.”

Oliver’s head smashed against the wall. Darkness and silence consumed him.

When next he opened his eyes, his vision was blurred, dimming and brightening at intervals for some reason. He could tell that he was lying on a couch and that his arm was bandaged up, but he didn’t know how he had ended up there. He tried speaking, but found his throat scratchy and dry. He blinked hard, raising his uninjured hand to rub his eyes clear faster as he shifted to sit up.

“Easy there,” John’s voice came from somewhere to his left. Something cold and solid pressed against his hand and he found himself holding a glass of water.

“…Digg?” he rasped, swallowing down some of the drink. “What…happened?” It was easier to focus on the ground, his sight sharpening as he identified a coffee table and carpet. As more of the furniture and the walls came into focus, he realized he was in John’s apartment. The blurry flashing lights had been the television tuned in to the local news, the sound muted to allow him to sleep.

“When we didn’t hear from you for over an hour, Felicity tracked you down to a room in a back alley at the edge of the Glades,” his friend explained. “You were out cold and your forearm was bandaged with your shirt sleeve. After the last surprise at Verdant, I volunteered to put you up here until you woke up. You’ve been asleep roughly eight hours and you barely escaped a full-on concussion.”

“What do the others know?” Oliver asked, draining the water and leaning back against the couch. His memory was coming together in bits and pieces, Slade’s bemused face, eyepatch and all, flashing in and out of his mind. He couldn’t hear even a whisper of Layla’s presence in the room but the sound of Slade’s questions echoed on repeat in his mind.

“About as much as I do,” John admitted, leaning against the back of the couch. “So are we talking about this now, just you and me, or are we waiting until we can get everyone together?”

_It’s time for the next step._

The final echoes of the night settled in his mind and those words made him shoot to his feet.

“They have to meet us at the base. Slade, whatever he’s planning, last night was some sort of distraction. He’s _started_ the next part of it.”

“Slade?” John echoed, walking around the couch to face him. “He’s the one that did this to you, isn’t he?”

Was there any point denying it? Oliver just looked at his friend silently, willing him to judge. He pushed back the memories of fleeting moments when he might have felt a shred of hope that they could save the city without unnecessary bloodshed.

“I thought I could change his mind.”

The excuse sounded even weaker when he said it aloud.

“You’re not thinking rationally about this.” John crossed his arms over his chest, the living image of skepticism. “And the more I’m learning about your relationship with Slade, the more I’m starting to think that you haven’t been thinking rationally about this since you found out he was behind everything.”

“You don’t know him the way I do,” Oliver replied, looking down out towards the window. The lights of Starling City were peaceful and calming in their brightness. Normally. But not tonight.

He turned to the television just then, catching sight of a snippet from his mother’s campaign. It felt like it had been months since they’d had their last conversation about Isabel. He still didn’t know what her problem was with his co-CEO, but what he _did_ know personally made him wonder. It was possible that Isabel was in league with Slade for that unspoken reason his mother didn’t seem to want to share. He opened his mouth to ask John exactly what Isabel had done to delay Sara and Felicity in Central City, then swore when he realized what was happening onscreen. The image behind the anchor switched from a still photo of Moira Queen’s mayoral campaign to one of the city’s prison buses. The headline flashing beneath the screen was damning: _Queen family possibly linked to Iron Heights breakout._

John grabbed the remote to unmute the report, sending a bewildered glance Oliver’s way. “…our source within the police department is refusing to speak further until an official statement can be released on the investigation,” the anchor said, frowning down at the folder she’d been given. “Representatives from the Queen campaign office have yet to release their own statement.”

“Slade didn’t just knock me out last night,” Oliver deduced grimly. Whatever Slade had done after slamming his head into the alley wall, it was somehow being used to tie his mother’s campaign to the mass prisoner escape.

On cue, both his and John’s phones buzzed furiously on the coffee table. Felicity was trying to reach both of them at once.

“Whatever we do next, we’re going to have to tread carefully to deal with this,” John remarked, looking from the news report to the phones. “Crazy ex or not, Slade’s upping his game and it may all come to a head very soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, reviews and comments do help. I love knowing what you guys are thinking, especially as close as we're getting to finally ending the Season 2 half of this!
> 
> And just how many of you want to smack Oliver upside the head and tell him that he just botched up a date? Technically his second with Slade?
> 
> Slade's casual look, riiight here: [x](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/72/1f/dd/721fdd1a15662284a6b369455747a612.jpg). Just imagine the beard, gray hair, and eye patch.  
>  _Four X_ \- pronounced 'fourex'. What Australians apparently call the X X X X brand of beer in Brisbane. Someone had me try it once, and I'm told it's widely popular there, and is found on-tap in pubs.


	11. Chapter 11

“So is the new baddie MO still complicated evil plots _or_ outright beating everyone up? I am really starting to get confused – and it’s _way_ too early in the morning for this!”

Felicity slumped forward in her seat, playing with her coffee cup. She, Sara, and the unsurprising tag-along Nyssa had been waiting at the base for a while by the time that John had gotten Oliver there. Nyssa was unflappable as usual, hovering behind Sara’s chair and holding an ice-pack in place on the injured woman’s shoulder. Felicity thankfully only looked exhausted. Roy didn’t even need the Mirakuru to explain his antsy pacing and Sin’s nervous fretting didn’t help, either.

“It’s safe to say that what Slade did to me was a diversion from whatever he was really planning,” Oliver said from his post by one of the columns near the center of the room. “Isabel making a bold move on her own does mean there’s dissention in the ranks and it may just be the perfect weakness to exploit.”

“If he’s telling the truth,” John interjected pointedly.

“And he likely isn’t,” Sara seconded, staring Oliver down pointedly before he could say otherwise.

The vigilante archer wanted to tell her that she now had an ally in John. He didn’t have the whole story but he already knew the most important part of it, anyway. Maybe she’d feel vindicated with the knowledge that Oliver’s secret wasn’t staying a secret. He forced himself not to think about Thea and what _she_ thought she knew.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “We don’t know if he’s telling the truth, but we _do_ know that he injected the Mirakuru into Isabel at some point.”

“She seemed normal at their hideout under Queen Consolidated,” Roy spoke up, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t think she had it in her yet then. I remember she said something – I’m sure I wasn’t hallucinating – about not believing the side-effects until she saw me on that table.” Something about the encounter had stuck with him, that much was plain in his eyes. “She wanted the serum in her. I’m sure of it.”

“And she got exactly what she wanted,” Felicity concluded. “The lady _sure_ can throw a punch!”

“These details are all well and good,” Nyssa finally deigned to speak, “but we must focus on what has not yet been said.” She crossed the room to tap at the computer screen Felicity had pulled up the cutthroat CEO’s photo on. “If we take Isabel Rochev’s trip to Central City as a separate action from Slade Wilson’s plans last night, who _else_ could have assisted him in his plot to discredit the Queen family?”

“Another player?” John suggested, though he didn’t like voicing the thought out at all.

“I can look up all Slade’s known acquaintances and contacts in the city,” Felicity volunteered, already tapping away at her keyboard. Not a moment later, she was whistling loudly. “Okay… we _might_ have to narrow down the search parameters. He gets around a _lot_. He’s been out and about with nearly all your mom’s other sponsors and lot of Queen Consolidated business partners, Oliver!”

As Sara limped over to help her, Oliver’s eyes turned to Nyssa. With Roy and Sin in discussion with John about the possible places where Slade could be keeping his men, the only person in the room he didn’t quite have a good read on was the visiting assassin.

“I know you’d do anything for Sara,” he told her, “but, yeah, thanks all the same. I didn’t think you’d stick around, though.”

He knew how much Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter cared about his friend, but Sara had to have offered her something significant for her to come back after their last parting. He distrusted Nyssa and the League of Assassins, but he understood they had a strict moral code no member simply broke without reason.

“My beloved keeps few secrets from me,” Nyssa replied slowly, a considering look in her eyes. “She asked my help for your sake, Oliver Queen. She told me about Slade Wilson. What agreements we have made for after his containment, that is between her and myself.”

It was jarring to learn that Sara had told someone about his secrets. Oliver couldn’t resist turning around to look at his friend, watching her head bent close to Felicity’s as they went through the search results on the computer screen. He caught her eye and they shared a long gaze. She knew that Nyssa had confessed what she knew. She smiled, an unrepentant, determined twist of her lips that forced him to look away before he did something that he would regret.

“Now isn’t this crazy-funny?” Felicity whistled out loud and turned the screen to the side. “Hey, Oliver, on public record, you’re the person Slade’s been seen out with the most. He’s linked to a lot of minor business deals in the city, but your name keeps popping up. I’m going to need to sift through camera feeds and company logs next, but it’ll take a few hours before I can narrow things down to exactly who Slade has been talking to off the books.”

“Or you could just accidentally run into his personal assistant outside Sebastian Blood’s campaign HQ and learn how often the good alderman makes social calls at his personal office.”

The base just seemed to get more and more crowded by the day, Oliver thought, watching Laurel clop down the stairs with a decidedly sour look on her face. He’d managed to avoid running into her in public since she’d found out the truth about his dual life, but he hadn’t thought she’d seek him out like this, either. As the rest of the team watched, she crossed to Felicity’s computer terminal and stared Oliver down wryly.

“Slade Wilson’s as upstanding a visitor to Starling City as City Hall could wish for,” she said. “His assistant implied he’s a little aloof, though he pays well and always dismisses her at a decent time. He may be backing the Queen campaign, but he has received Alderman Blood at his personal office three times – just for friendly chats.” Dressed in a suit and neutral lipstick, she gave Oliver the impression she’d made time in her workday for this. It worried him a little to think that she had come straight here with what she’d learned. It worried him even more, given how much he knew about her suspicions about Blood. Now he just might have to take those seriously.

“You believe us about him?” Oliver asked, weathering her gaze. Once, he’d known what she was thinking at a glance. Maybe a year ago, he’d been able to breach a few of her walls all over again, but she’d completely iced him out again now.

“If I don’t, there’s a lot about what goes on in this city that will continue not to make sense,” Laurel shot back, eyes sweeping over the group. When she noticed Nyssa there, she stiffened. Recognition flashed in her eyes and, for a fleeting moment, Oliver thought that he’d have to keep her from launching herself at the assassin. It wasn’t necessary. Whatever iron-hard resolve had gotten Laurel this far did not fail her now. “Definitely, things make sense – and just keep getting more complicated.”

“Which is why we can’t afford to lose any more time,” Oliver tried to steer everyone back in the direction of the search, especially hoping to keep Felicity from looking further into his interactions with Slade. “Digg, you’d better head to Central City and keep an eye on Cisco and Dr. Snow in case Slade’s goons show up. Sara, you and Roy help Felicity sort through the city maps and see if you can come up with a location for his base of operations or find hints of what he really did last night. Sin, head out into the city, business as usual, but keep your eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary. I’ll go and see what Mom’s staff have to say about those allegations.”

Handing out assignments, he deliberately didn’t include Nyssa. She could do as she pleased, as long as she was still working under her agreement with Sara. Whatever else he thought of her, she followed her honor code to the letter and as long as she didn’t move against him, she and whatever forces she had with her would be welcome backup when all-out violence inevitably erupted. He should have counted on trouble from another quarter, though.

“I’m coming with you,” Laurel said firmly.

Oliver had known her long enough not to fight her on that.

If there was something that Laurel was good at, it was getting to the bottom of a mystery. When she and Oliver had been dating, he’d made a point of concealing his trysts as completely as possible. What she didn’t have suspicions about, she couldn’t find out the whole story of. Still, she had good intuitions, and he remembered very well how she had gotten him, in the guise of the Arrow, to help her look for Sebastian Blood’s old family files. They hadn’t had much time to talk about that or anything else since the rollercoaster of events in the last week and the details to discuss only seemed to pile up higher and higher.

“I’m going to talk to him,” Laurel said. She had brought a car to the Glades, parked a few streets away from the base before slipping down through the secret entrance, and was now driving them both towards the city center to the Queen mayoral campaign offices.

“Now that you know about me and the Arrow, I don’t have to tell you exactly how I feel about you looking into Sebastian Blood – again.” Oliver turned his head to her, frowning outright. He’d known right away that was one of the reasons she had decided to go to the base. He should have guessed that the first whiff of anything strange about Blood would make her want to investigate him again.

“You made me wary of Slade Wilson,” the lawyer reminded him. At the next stop light, she pulled up the parking break and twisted in her seat to face him. “I don’t know the whole story, but I believe you and I trust you and your team can handle whatever he’s up to. But Blood? I told you about him. Let me _help_.”

“It could be nothing,” Olive insisted, refusing to be the first one to turn away. “Slade’s been getting to know everyone in the city. Sebastian once promised me our friendship wouldn’t be affected by my backing my mother. Maybe he had a similar discussion with Slade, not knowing exactly who he is. Laurel, you saw for yourself that Brother Blood was _not_ Sebastian.”

“You don’t find the timing suspicious at all?” she pressed. The light turned green and she had to look back at the streets, but the frown didn’t vanish from her brows. “The election is only a few weeks away and suddenly your mother’s suspected of having something to do with that Iron Heights breakout, the same breakout that Sara told me was orchestrated by Slade Wilson? And what exactly is going on now? The woman who poisoned Sara last time she was in town is at the base and you look like you’ve been in a fight.”

“I can always tell Mom I’ve been having Digg teach me self-defense and that we got carried away.” Oliver wasn’t going to talk about Nyssa when it clearly looked like Sara hadn’t told her sister the whole of _that_ story herself. Instead, he shifted focus. “I need you to stay away from Queen Consolidated for a while. Turn around and walk away quickly if you see Isabel Rochev. If you see Slade, don’t go anywhere with him. If you can keep him away from Thea, I’d appreciate it.”

They were near the campaign offices now, pulling into a parking lot near the staid old brick building. It wasn’t the end of their conversation, but they’d have to pick up again later, with fewer prying ears around. It was still early in the day, one or two interns walking in and out, running off on errands for the fast-approaching election date. All the staffers Oliver and Laurel passed were busy at their desks, barely looking up from their tasks to spare the visitors a glance.

Oliver had expected to find his mother and her advisors closeted together in the innermost office, but he found her standing by her desk and talking to Thea instead.

“Well, it looks like I won’t be trying to distract Mom on my own,” the youngest Queen said with a cheeky grin. She nudged her brother on the shoulder and went on to greet Laurel.

“Is everything okay?” Oliver asked, not sure if he should be worried or not.

“I have a team of lawyers and campaign reps in close contact with the police department to find out just who propagated that horrible rumor and allowed it to circulate on the news,” Moira said without preamble, taking Oliver’s hand in hers.

A truce, the gesture said. What they faced now was more important.

“Meanwhile, I’ve been bringing Mom up to date on just how well you and one of her sponsors are getting along,” Thea broke in again.

“It’s just more proof that a mother doesn’t learn everything about her children firsthand,” Moira said. She hadn’t let go of Oliver’s hand and her son became suddenly aware that her grip was just a bit tighter than it normally would be. “If you or Mr. Wilson had only told me that you became acquainted before you returned home, I wouldn’t have been so pushy with you last time we spoke.”

Everything went crashing down around Oliver’s ears.

The last time he’d talked to Thea, he’d admitted to her that there had been a story to his past with Slade. It was only by sheer luck that she had not told their mother exactly what that past was. The last thing their strained relationship needed was confirmation that he’d had what his mother would consider a morbid affair in the time he’d been thought dead.

“Some things are better left unsaid,” he forced out hollowly, eyes flicking from Thea to their mother unbidden. All these eyes on him, his past floating at the cusp of exposure, was too much. “Excuse me.”

He turned around and walked out, just barely avoiding ramming right into Laurel. Before anyone could stop him, he took a left out of the main room and into the corridor leading to the men’s room. He felt like he hadn’t truly had a moment to himself in the long weeks since he’d found out Slade had survived. Something inside him twisted painfully and he bent low over a sink to splash some water on his face. He remembered the long nights after what he’d thought had been a disastrous end. Fantasies of what could have been had haunted his dreams in the small bedroom in Hong Kong, dulled in the prison camp, and frozen deep and dead inside him in the cold of the months after. Now, with so much _hate_ between them, he just wished he could turn back time and unmake the choices he’d made.

Swiping a paper towel from the dispenser and swiping it over his face, only one thought crossed his mind: he’d give anything to be back on that mountain peak on Lian Yu, torn between staring at the sky and the crinkles at the corners of Slade’s eyes.

Reality and the present returned with a vengeance as police officers and Quentin Lance strode in suddenly through the restroom doors and headed straight for him. 

*** 

Five Years Ago – Lian Yu

_Three days of planning and training. Three days of going over every single angle of the layout of each deck of the Amazo, each cell block, each weapon room. Three days of laying low and sending just the right number of false location trails for Ivo and his mercenaries to run circles around. Oliver could hit ten arrows straight into the absolute center of a stationary target before his arms hurt. He could reasonably aim at and hit the swinging bags of dried grass that served as his moving practice targets. Slade had discovered the Mirakuru made him strong enough to bend steel pipes into pretzels and make very impressive dents in the sides of the tanks in the remains of Fyers’ old camp just with his fists. And still Sara was uncertain that they were ready to attempt a hostile takeover of the ship that was their only viable chance of getting off the island any time soon._

_“Ivo’s got four prisoners on that ship,” Oliver reminded her for what had to be the fourth time that night. He dusted off his pants and got to his feet, tossing aside the rag in his hand. “You know the layout and Slade has some idea of how to sail a cargo ship. If we get those guys free and convince a handful of the crewmen to cooperate, we can finally get out of here!”_

_“Ivo is desperate,” Sara insisted, angrily hefting one of the rifles they’d stockpiled in the middle of the fuselage for cleaning. “You think it was bad when you were being held in the cells? That won’t compare to what they’ll do to us if we fail and they decide we’re more valuable alive than dead.”_

_The fire burned low in their makeshift fire pit outside, the light barely enough to keep rechecking weapons they’d already prepared a half dozen times in the last few hours. Their plan would take most of the next day to enact, and for that, they needed all the rest they could get. If Sara would just stop worrying, Oliver could comfortably curl up in his beddings for a much-needed nap. He wasn’t going anywhere near his bow and arrow until dawn._

_“Just because we have Slade doesn’t mean that everything will go the way we plan it.”_

_Rage flashed white-hot in Oliver’s gut and he wheeled back in Sara’s direction. “Can’t you take what you’ve got? You were right to be worried about the Mirakuru. Slade did hide it. But that doesn’t mean that you’re right about everything else. We’re leaving it all behind here on the island to rot with the rest of the ghosts and we’re going_ home _.”_

_Home. The idea of home was what drove him now. He didn’t focus on the memory of the lights of Starling City, the warmth of Queen Manor, or Laurel’s smiling face. He focused on that one word: home. As long as it was away from Purgatory, it would be_ home _._

_Deliberate loud footsteps at the entrance of the fuselage reminded him just why home had taken on that ambiguous maelstrom of a definition._

_“When you two are done arguing about what’s yet to happen, we’d best get some shut-eye,” Slade said, dropping his patrol rifle onto the pile by Sara’s feet. “Save your energy for the fighting tomorrow.”_

_He made his way towards his and Oliver’s sleeping bags, tugging off his jacket and boots as he rolled smooth as a big cat onto the makeshift beddings. He’d forgiven Sara her accusations in the last few days but insisted that it was best that only one of them really knew where the miracle serum had been hidden. Sara had begun treating him like a walking time bomb ever since._

_Oliver simply focused on preparing for their ship invasion. He would not take sides._

_“Ivo paying for what he did to Shado, a well-supplied ship to get us at least to the mainland, and it won’t be hard to find a phone to figure out what comes after,” he ticked off aloud, rolling back his shoulders and following Slade to their sleeping area._

_“Rest, kid,” Slade rumbled, tugging him down by the waist. “You’ll be rubbish tomorrow without it.”_

_“We can’t all be built to last like the Energizer Bunny,” he replied, jabbing his elbow half-heartedly at the other man’s side._

_It earned him a laugh and Slade’s nose buried possessively against the back of his neck. He tipped his head to the side and took a quiet whiff, himself. Earth and musk and a little drying sweat from the patrolling, those were the scents that Oliver associated with and found comfort in around his companion. He wondered what his own scent was like, if Slade took some comfort in it too. He turned his head again in time to see Sara making her way to the door of the fuselage, likely to sit by the fire for a while. She looked back at him and held his gaze for a few moments before she walked out into the night._

_He just wanted this to be over. He wanted to get off this island for good. As a solid arm tugged him closer by the waist, he thought that perhaps he_ was _taking a side after all._

_With the new openness between Slade (dare he think up a more appropriate term than mentor?) and himself, maybe life after the island could be something different from what it had been before. The idea made him smile as he drifted off to sleep. He could even imagine Slade actually whispering behind him, making promises for the future._

_“We’ll kill every single person responsible for Shado’s death… and when we’re finished, I’m going to make something of your pretty boy ass. We’ll go places and make you a whole different man…”_

_Of course, of course, to the near-unconscious Oliver, it was all just part of a dream._

*** 

The last time that Laurel had been to see Sebastian Blood, she’d admitted that she had been wrong about him. Now, she knew better. Now, she was back to tell him that she would not be fooled any longer.

“It’s been a long time, ADA Lance,” Blood said, looking up from his computer screen and gesturing for her to take a seat on the other side of his desk. “As far as I know, I don’t have any meetings scheduled with the District Attorney’s office today. What can I help you with?”

They were alone. Laurel had noticed the aides withdraw into the next room. The office door was the kind that automatically closed. She’d thought that Blood was a contradiction: open to the people he watched over, but well-guarded against them all the same. It was what made him most dangerous, in the end. She really should have noticed it sooner.

“Oliver Queen has just been arrested as a suspect in the escape of the Iron Heights inmates,” Laurel announced. She stood her ground in the center of the room, staring straight at him. “It’s been over a week since then and I know Oliver was nowhere near the highway that night – but the police say that the forensics team found traces of his DNA on the hood of one of the transport buses. I inquired about that peculiarly delayed report and I learned it came from one of the outsourcing labs in your district.”

“I’ve always admired your tenacity,” the alderman told her, swiveling his seat in her direction. “I suppose that you’d like me to look into the matter? I don’t doubt that this is just a terrible misunderstanding. Oliver is a friend.”

“So is Slade Wilson, I hear.”

Laurel didn’t know if what she saw in Blood’s eyes was worry or threat. She steeled herself for either in verbal form as he let out a slow breath. The door was closed, she reminded herself, but it wasn’t locked. She’d messaged Felicity to alert her father at the police station if she didn’t leave Sebastian Blood’s office within the hour.

“It couldn’t hurt to try and sway some of Moira Queen’s backers,” the man said, looking her straight in the eye in an unnaturally still way. “I had Oliver’s support until his mother decided to run against me. Why shouldn’t I look where I can for more people to bolster my campaign?” He got to his feet without looking away. “And even if that doesn’t work, it’s always good to get to know the new businessmen in the city.”

“Do you know all of them well?” Laurel pressed. “How sure are you that all of them bring _good_ to this city? You’re campaigning to become responsible for every single life within Starling. Are you certain that the people you’re getting to know are willing to share that responsibility?”

She turned to leave, unable to stomach being in the room any longer. She didn’t see how Blood continued to watch her walk away and she certainly didn’t see the haunted consideration in his eyes.

***

“…and I’m telling you I was nowhere near that road on the night of the incident.”

For the second time, Oliver was repeating himself to one of the officers assigned to speak with him in the interrogation room of the main precinct of Starling City Police Department. He’d been in there for about an hour already and his mother’s lawyers had not yet arrived. He looked at the man in front of him, noting that he couldn’t be a rookie, but didn’t have the hardened look of a cop who’d been on the streets for several years. He wasn’t quite sympathetic, but he was definitely not certain how to handle the detainment of a high-profile business figure.

“Look, we need to wait to see what the chief has to say about this,” the officer said, calm and even-toned. “And maybe get you a few moments alone with your lawyer. For now, just sit tight, okay?”

“I guess the consolation’s that I’m not in handcuffs then, huh?” Oliver quipped, trying to keep his mood light as well. He didn’t doubt that this was part of Slade’s plan, but it didn’t make sense to keep him out of the way if he wanted to see the city burn. Surely he would want Oliver to actually watch it happen? Why would he want to see him locked up?

Two sharp raps on the door signaled Detective Lance’s return. He walked in rubbing his neck and sighed audibly when he caught sight of Oliver staring right at him. He gestured for the officer to leave and sank into the seat opposite him.

“Tell me, just what does this look like to you?” he asked bluntly, leaning on one elbow and looking the detainee in the eye.

“I see the police arresting a civilian for a crime without conclusive evidence,” Oliver replied evenly.

“This city’s seen enough shit-storms in the last year to last a whole century,” Detective Lance pressed, “and the last thing I need is to find _you_ mixed up in the middle of it again.”

“It’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.” It was Oliver’s turn to lean over the table, tense and starting to get visibly frustrated. “The only time I could possibly have been near one of those buses was when my mother was at Iron Heights – and that, detective, was months ago.” He hadn’t exactly been a regular there, either.

Detective Lance got to his feet and started haphazardly pacing. “Look, some bigwigs from out of town are here, FBI or something, coming to speak with you. I asked for a few minutes to tell you myself, to help you prepare a little. It’s all a little too… cloak-and-dagger for my tastes, but what can you do? The orders were to scoop you up and hold you here until they sent someone over.” It was a favor, some sort of residual, misplaced obligation to the boy that a small part of him still recalled Oliver as.

“What agency, exactly?” the younger man asked slowly, a heavy suspicion creeping up from the back of his mind.

“The kind that has taken a special interest in the curious happenings in Starling City, Mr. Queen.”

Just like that, everything shifted into an altogether different direction. Amanda Waller herself walked in, two of her cronies in tow. She had on her blandest business-like façade, flashing a fake FBI badge as she walked up to the table.

“We believe Mr. Queen might have gotten mixed up by accident in high-stakes criminal affairs,” she said, flashing a cold smile at both the detective and the detainee. “He’s likely done nothing more than been in the wrong place at the wrong time – one too many times. Thank you for your cooperation, Detective Lance. Mr. Queen will be quite safe with us, if you’ll lend us the room for a few minutes.”

Quentin Lance was just doing his job. Oliver didn’t blame him for being more than a little confused or for doing very little about it. He had bigger things to focus on.

“At some point, you’ll actually have to keep your word,” Amanda said as soon as the door had closed behind the detective and her detail had moved to stand guard outside. “When you say you’ll take care of your city on your own, there’s only so many times I can believe you.”

“I _am_ handling things,” Oliver insisted, standing and crossing to the other side of the table to stare her down. “Give me a few more days and I’ll finish taking down Deathstroke and his entire operation in the city.”

“Entire operation, you say? I wasn’t aware that he wasn’t working alone.” She was lying. Of course she knew what was going on in the city. She simply wanted to force Oliver to spell it out and he knew it.

“He’s trying to frame me to keep me distracted from his endgame,” he admitted.

“This endgame which involves a volatile version of a super-soldier serum, which happens to not only be in his bloodstream, but has been replicated and distributed among the city’s criminal elements?” Amanda kept him pinned where he was with her gaze, no emotion reflecting outwards. “Clearly, you’re losing control of the situation. ARGUS _will_ be stepping in. Whether or not you cooperate with us is up to you.”

She went up to the door and rapped four times. One of her agents opened the door to let them out. Oliver gritted his teeth and forced himself not to retort. This wasn’t in the plans, but without any new leads, he was going to have to take all the help he could get.

“I guess this means we’re heading somewhere else to discuss the terms of that cooperation, then.”

*** 

In the alley by the police station, Roy watched from the shadows. He hadn’t been able to stay still in the base after Felicity had gotten news of Oliver’s arrest and it hadn’t taken much to slip away while everyone had been busy. He’d gotten to the police station half an hour ago and had been looking for an opportunity to either break Oliver out or get a closer look at what was really happening. He’d seen the nondescript black cars pull out just in front of the precinct and pulled his hood further over his head to creep closer to the front of the alley for a better look. If anything, it would keep his mind preoccupied and the hallucinations wouldn’t come to him any time soon.

Finally, his vigil paid off. The suits that had gotten out of the vehicles and gone into the building were finally coming out. The woman in charge was with them, as was the police chief and Detective Lance. And Oliver.

Roy was surprised enough to step out of the alley fully. He knew he couldn’t call out to Oliver or the police would notice him. He pulled out his phone to contact Felicity about what he’d found. He only got halfway through dialing her number when a small hand wrapped firmly around his wrist and a face he’d know anywhere moved directly in front of him.

“Where have you _been_?”

Thea stared at him as though he were a ghost and he was too shell-shocked and unprepared for the sight of her – real, solid, definitely not a hallucination – that he did not answer right away/ He held her at arm’s length, drinking in the sight of her. When he finally recovered enough of his wits to come up with something of a halfway decent explanation, she had started shaking him.

“Everyone thinks you’ve been kidnapped and the police have started actually looking for you,” Thea snarled, fisting the front of his hoodie tightly in her little hands. “I’ve been so _worried_! With everything going on with Mom and with Ollie suddenly being taken in for questioning… I didn’t need to be freaking out about you too!”

Before Roy could tell her that it was all a big misunderstanding, Oliver and the men in black started moving. The woman in charge was leading the way into the cars and the police chief and Detective Lance were racing back into the precinct. Internally cursing that he’d focused so completely on Thea to overhear what was going on, Roy tried to move out into the streets. He didn’t care who saw him anymore.

Oliver, pausing at the door of one of the black cars, suddenly pinned him with his eyes. If he was surprised that his little sister was there, he didn’t show it. He said everything that needed to say to Roy with his eyes: Slade was making his next move.

“Thea, I _promise_ we’ll sit down and talk about this – soon.” Roy shushed the girl in his arms before she could retort. “But right now, I need to get you somewhere safe. I’m taking you home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep saying sorry about the long waits between posts but now I get to give you all a concrete reason. I've just moved to Vancouver - not to stalk Stephen Amell or anything like that, but to officially take a certificate course on Creative Writing. I'm also finally working on the draft of my first-ever novel, so am now suddenly _hyper-_ busy!
> 
> But I'm resolved to at least end this story at my version of the end of Season 2. If I continue on to Season 3, I'm actually going to listen to your opinions on that, guys. We have... another one or two chapters before we need a decision. Let me hear from you all!


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